"The link is the printing of money
to finance government spending when the government cannot (or does not
want to) finance all of its spending by taxes or borrowing from the
public. In the extreme case, imagine a government that wants to spend
$10 billion (say, on submarines) but has no ability to tax or borrow
from the public. One option is for this government to print $10 billion
worth of currency and use this currency to pay for the submarines. The
revenue that a government raises by printing money is called seigniorage."

- AMI: Free
Monetary Seminar in Chicago at Roosevelt University on Wednesday
evening, March 4th, 6:30 PM at
the Spertus Room, 2nd floor: "How
our ridiculous banking and monetary system brought down the US and
World economies"

How
mobile phone banking is empowering the poor - by: Natasha
Elkington, Reuters AlertNet, 13 Feb 2009M-PESA,
which was set up by Vodaphone and funded through DFID, now has 5
million users in Kenya, more than all the bank accounts. It is being
expanded to support salary payments, bill payments and social benefit
payments (this can be a good tool to expand the local currency business
model)

Chinese offered consumer tickets
- By Olivia Chung, Asia Times, Feb 14, 2009The local
government issued 100 million yuan worth of coupons for low-income
families before the lunar new year, an important two-week
holiday which this year ran from January 26. Sales of Hangzhou-made
home appliances doubled during the holiday period compared with the
same period last year, according to local officials. Four big shopping
malls received 1.52 million yuan worth of coupons, redeemed against 5.4
million yuan worth of goods, one said. A 65-year-old Hangzhou native
named Zhang said he and his family used coupons worth 300 yuan at a
supermarket on January 24 when the coupons took effect, buying
traditional coats and ingredients for the New Year's Eve dinner - an
important reunion occasion for families.. The city's senior Communist Party
official Wang Guoping told a conference this month that local civil
servants might receive part of their wages in shopping vouchers,
according to a Metropolitan Express report on February 9. "They are to receive about 5% to
10% of their wages in the form of shopping vouchers," Wang was
quoted as saying. The mayor and Wang "will take the lead and all civil
servants will follow", he said

Japan to issue
Government currency ?Japan Finance Chief May Consider
No-Interest Bonds - By Keiko Ujikane and Matthew Benjamin,
Bloomberg, Feb. 18, 2009Operation
DEMAGNETIZE: FIRST, under
Shoichi Nakagawa the Liberal-Democrat Party proposes to issue sovereign
state notes (debt-free currency as the old JFK 'United States Notes'
and the old Italian 'Biglietti di stato a corso legale'); SECOND, Shoichi Nakagawa is
dismissed as minister under 'appearing drunk at G7 in Rome'...; THIRD, the newly appointed minister
Yosano dismissed the LDP proposal for the government to print money as
a “a futile idea.” Can you connect the dots? Appointed
Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, suggests considering additional economic
measures [including Government currency and zero interest bond]
- Asahi Shimbun, February 17 2009 (ore locali 23:43)
(VIDEO 1) (VIDEO
2) (VIDEO
3) (VIDEO
4)Japan To Issue Government (versus Bank of
Japan) Currency? - By: Darrel Whitten, dbFX, February 10,
2009Government
issues of paper currency are not that unusual in history. During the
Meiji Era (1868-1912), the government issued what were called
"dajokansatsu" bills to pay for the Boshin War from 1868 to 1869. The
Japanese government also printed "gumpyo" military script during the
Russo-Japanese War and both world wars, while the US government printed
bills to fund FDR's "New Deal" to combat the Great Depression during
the 1930s. Some academics
have been calling for such an issue for over 10 yearsMPs step up clash with Bank of Japan
- By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo, Financial Times, February 5 2009A
plan to print some Y50,000bn ($546bn) worth of a new currency to fund
pump-priming projects has been drawn up by influential politicians in
Japan in a sign of desperation in the ruling Liberal Democratic party
over the country’s failing economy. To be released on Friday, the
proposals to issue government notes come amid rising frustration among
politicians with the independent Bank of Japan. It has been reluctant
to bow to pressure to run the yen printing presses faster to stimulate
the economy. The group wants Y30,000bn of the new money to fund
programmes supporting new industries and infrastructure projects,
including doubling the size of Tokyo’s Haneda airport. The remaining
Y20,000bn would be earmarked for government purchases of stocks and
real estate [the BOJ
seigniorage masters will switch to panic mode...]The temptation of dollar seigniorage
- By Kosuke Takahashi, AsiaTimes, Jan 23, 2009Seigniorage
is the revenue that a government raises by printing money. Suppose it
costs one dollar to print a US$100 bill. As long as the world deems
this bill worth $100, the US government receives the revenue of $99
every time it prints out a $100 bill (the difference being an
approximation of the costs related to producing the bills) and
circulates it to the markets at home and overseas. This is a perquisite
of the US under the present world currency system. Neither Europe nor
Japan, among other major economies, can enjoy the benefits of
seigniorage globally because the euro and the yen have not become international settlement currencies

Gasoline is
expensive on the economy in Europe. The NATO Status of Forces Agreement
(SOFA) allows the sale of fuel coupons to authorized
members of the NATO forces free
of local country taxeson a controlled basis. Gas coupons are used primarily to
buy gas on the economy to help defray some of the cost. Gas coupons are
not expected to cover leisure activities and vacations. Italy rations
gasoline to employees stationed there: 300 liters per month for
most vehicles. Gas coupons are used at AGIP and some ESSO stations; they can only be purchased in
Italy (Se sei un militare della NATO
ti danno 300 litri di benzina al mese esentasse pagabili con la
loro "moneta locale": i "NATO coupon"
e la "US Forces fuel ration card",
esentasse nell'area EURO)

PREPARE
FOR THE BEST - By Paul Glover, City Paper (Philadelphia, Pa.),
January 28, 2009MONEY:
Give yourselves credit. Dollar power dwindles because dollars are
backed by less than nothing: rusting industry and $10 trillion debt. So
we'll print real money -- neighborhood currencies -- backed by real
people. Next Steps: Mutual enterprise systems (neither Wall Street nor
Red Square) celebrate the spirit of regional enterprise when it serves
community and nature. They applaud innovations -- public and private
and personal -- that meet real needs. Local trading credits based on
local land, skills, time and tools refresh the economy. Poverty is lack
of networks more than lack of dollars, and Philadelphia has thousands
of networks -- business, professional, technical, fraternal,
neighborhood, church, union, electoral, senior, youth, racial, sexual,
athletic, hobby, family, friends. Woven together they're a powerful
base of regional trust, trade and wealth. Take your pick of
neighborhood and sector currencies. Cities may not issue them but may
accept them for taxes. Local Heroes: Philadelphia's 83 credit unions,
Valley Green Bank, e3bank, Equal Dollars, barter exchanges and gift
economy, Philadelphia Regional and Independent Stock Exchange,
Philadelphia Fund for Ecological Living (PhilaFEL)

Private Coinage - by Murray N.
RothbardHow
would private coinage work? In the same way, we have said, as any other
business. Each minter would produce whatever size or shape of coin is
most pleasing to his customers. The price would be set by the free
competition of the market (Control of money decides who lives well, who
works, whose house is built and repaired, who gets health care)

Pearls Before Breakfast - By
Gene Weingarten, Washington Post, April 8, 2007Can
one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush
hour? Let's find out. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against
a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the
escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world,
playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most
valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The
Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities
-- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal
setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend? [experiment proves that people
accept nothing as valuable unless the the elite package and approve it
for them]

Declaration of the Assembly of Social
Movements at the World Social Forum, January 27th - February
1st, 2009, Belem Brazil . Spectrezine, February 10, 2009We
must contribute to the largest possible popular mobilisation to enforce
a number of urgent measures such as:"Nationalising the banking sector
without compensation and with full social monitoring"Reducing
working time without any wage cut"Taking
measures to ensure food and energy sovereignty"Stop
wars, withdraw occupation troops and dismantle military foreign bases"Acknowledging
the peoples' sovereignty and autonomy ensuring their right to
self-determination"Guaranteeing
rights to land, territory, work, education and health for all"Democratise
access to means of communication and knowledge.

The
LiQUIDity Network - FEASTA, January 2009The name "feasta" is an
Irish word which means "in the future". Feasta believes that a radical
monetary reform is one of the keys to sustainability. The new exchange
system will be owned and controlled by the participants as it is they
who give its units their value. It is envisaged that the users will
elect a management committee which will operate under a trust deed
setting out the basis on which the system is to be run. It is also
envisaged that the management committee will hire a contractor to
operate the system from day to day or, if the commercial banks become
involved, pay a fee for the use of their systems

Trial by jury returns to Japan and
the lawyers aren't happy - Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times, February
28, 2009Sixty years after being abolished
by the wartime military Government, trial by jury is back and it
is dividing Japan. Lawyers are worried about adapting their methods,
Japanese at large seem horrified by the prospect of jury duty and
judges have denounced the change as destructive tinkering.—
In Germany jury
trials were abolished in 1924 because cases were thought to be
too complex for juries of lay people—
France has not
restored its jury system since it was abolished during the German
occupation in 1941. A panel of judges and jurors sits in the
higher courts—
In the US lawyers provide questionnaires of up to 100 pages to vet
jurors—
South Korea
introduced juries last year. (la giuria popolare è un diritto
conquistato con la Magna Carta e permetterebbe al popolo di giudicare
direttamente i grandi criminali odierni, i gestori del racket del
signoraggio privato, che da 60 anni sfuggono *misteriosamente*
alla giustizia ordinaria)

WHAT WE MUST DO -- FINAL PART -
Rachel's Democracy & Health News #1000, February 26, 2009The
environmental movement has now sundered into two camps:Camp 1. Those who understand that the modern corporation operates
largely beyond the control of national governments (which was
the main impetus behind the corporate "globalization" project and the
creation of the World Trade Organization) and is the out-of-control behemoth
chiefly responsible for destroying the planet as a place suitable for
human habitation;vs.Camp 2. Those who are captivated or
bedazzled by the corporate form and draw nourishment from it, as
suckling piglets draw nourishment from their sow

US: "Interaction with State and Local Fusion
Centers: Concept of Operations" - December 2008 (released by
Secrecy News)The
Department of Homeland
Security has produced a new "Concept of Operations" to define
how the Department will support and oversee the network of dozens of "fusion centers" (= concentration camps) that have been
established around the country. The fusion centers are intended
to promote a collaborative approach among federal, state and local
authorities to combating terrorism and criminal activity ( = indoor usurykeeping operations to
deal with social unrest). From another perspective, there is "not enough terrorism" to justify
the creation and maintenance of the fusion center system. "There
is, more often than not, insufficient purely 'terrorist' activity to
support a multi-jurisdictional and multi-governmental level fusion
center that exclusively processes terrorist activity," according to
Sacramento police officer Milton Nenneman. ("Fusion
Centers Face 'Insufficient' Terrorist Activity," Secrecy News, June
3, 2008)
Un gruppo di deportati pronti per il nuovo programma di "eutanasia economica"

Usurykeeping in Afghanistan: the
NATO report - MASTER NARRATIVE AS AT 6 October 2008The
Policy Action Group
(PAG) was created in July 2006 at President Karzai’s behest to focus
Afghan and international effort on fostering improved security within
the responsibility of Regional Command (South). The PAG is Afghan-led,
is supported by NATO/ISAF, UNAMA, World
Bank, EU and G8 lead nations and meets bi-weekly. It has 4
working groups on security, intelligence, strategic communications and
R&D

MARK
SCHAPIRO AT PENN STATE - By Peter Buckland, 3E-COE.blogspot.com,
February 19, 2009[Rachel's
introduction: The European Union's precautionary approach to the
natural environment is driving innovation -- and gaining economic
leadership -- the world over. Lack
of environmental regulation is causing the U.S. to fall behind
economically.]

Let's
Talk About the Highly Radioactive
Waste - CommonsNews.org, February 20, 2009"Fortunately,
we can use some tools to help with this impasse. One, the 'First Rule
of Holes,' instructs that if
one finds oneself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
Another tool is the much-underrated Precautionary Principle, which
basically says that if a technology poses dire risks to the health and
safety of people or the environment, it should not be implemented."

Cancer Questions Grow Around Fermi Nuclear
Plant in Michigan - Michigan Messenger, February 17, 2009"Those
who create a poison are responsible for demonstrating that it is safe
(this is the Precautionary Principle in public health)," Mangano told
Michigan Messenger in an e-mail exchange. "But instead of utilities and
the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] conducting studies, they set an arbitrary limit of
radiation emissions and exposure, and declare any levels below this to
be 'safe.'

Majority
Of U.S. States Join Sovereignty Movement, Assert 10th Amendment Rights
- New World Liberty, February 25, 2009A
private corporation owned by a small group of people, who own over half
the world’s wealth, control our currency and monetary policy through
the Federal Reserve. They also have such power over the world as a
whole through the World Bank, IMF, most other national central banks,
numerous well-funded non-government organizations, and numerous
corrupted government officials

Ron Paul Grills Bernanke: "You Can’t
Reinflate The Bubble" - Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com,
February 25, 2009“This
is the end of an era,” said the Congressman, “we can’t reinflate the
bubble….if we think that we can reinflate this bubble by artificially
creating credit out of thin air and calling it capital, believe me we
don’t have a prayer of solving these problems - we have a total misunderstanding
of what credit is versus capital.”

Expectancy
of riots leads authorities to prepare
for mass civil unrest - Paul Joseph Watson, Prison
Planet.com, February 23, 2009Urban
warfare training drills are taking place across the country as top
analysts as well as officials predict a potential “summer of rage”
across Europe and America as civil unrest from the economic fallout
builds. Earlier this month, 150 U.S. troops from the U.S. Special
Operations Command whizzed around the streets of New Orleans in
military helicopters and even dropped bombs in what officials described
as a “training event”Soldati americani
si stanno preparando per missioni di UsuryKeeping

The
Alex Jones Show - L I V E - With Edwin
Vieira (mp3) - PrisonPlanet, Feb 24, 2009Alex
welcomes back to the show Dr.
Edwin Vieira, the world’s most foremost authority on the role of the
Constitution as it relates to money. Viera is the author of How
to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary and Pieces of Eight: The Monetary
Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution

SAVE OUR
CHILDREN: LEGALIZE DRUGS -
By Frosty Wooldridge, NewsWithViews.com, February 26, 2009After
the first 12 interviews with my brother Police Officer and Detective
Howard Wooldridge of Lansing, Michigan (retired) concerning the "War on
Drugs," more and more Americans understand the underpinnings of how the
U.S. government protracts a national taxpayer fraud. At this time, over
10,000 judges, sheriffs, cops and thousands of citizens belong to
www.leap.cc or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. After 39
years of a failed Drug War policy and 30 million citizens that served
time in prison for simple drug possession, this organization educates
citizens toward a more plausible future for Americans

The Marijuana Trick - Doug
Yurchey, 2005Where
did the word 'marijuana' come from? In the mid 1930s, the M-word was
created to tarnish the good image and phenomenal history of the hemp
plant...as you will read. The facts cited here, with references, are
generally verifiable in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica which was printed on hemp paper for 150 years

Ex-Treasury official confirms gold
suppression scheme - CHRIS POWELL, GATA, February 24, 2009In
an essay published today at Counterpunch.org, former Assistant Treasury
Secretary Paul Craig Roberts confirms that the U.S. government has been
leasing gold to suppress its price and support the dollar. The
admission is made in the last paragraph of the essay, which is appended

The Euro, an illusory shield against
crisis? - By Clotilde Mathieu, Spectrezine, February 24, 2009The
crisis shows up the very serious defects in the original conception of
the euro. Entirely obsessed as they were with the stability criteria
put forward by financial markets, those that championed its creation in
1999 were aiming first at a "strong euro" in the hope of luring as much
capital as possible to the European market. Hence the curb on public
spending (with the Maastricht treaty), and the pressure on wages
through the deregulation of labour markets that diminished labour's
negotiating power. "The euro has brought war over exchange rates to an
end, but it has exacerbated competition over prices," rightly claimed
Jean-Paul Fitoussi, president of the Observatoire français des
conjonctures économiques (French Observatory of the overall state of
the economy)

WHY
STATES ARE SHUNNING AKA's "STIMULUS" MONEY - By Lynn Stuter,
NewsWithViews.com, February 24, 2009If
a state, county or municipality accepts a grant, the recipient finds
themselves subject to a virtual spider-web of laws that cannot be
escaped. The effect is truly that of a fly trapped in a spider web,
unable to extricate itself from the sticky mess in which it finds
itself entrapped. Entrapping states, counties and municipalities,
forcing them to subjugate to federal regulation is the stick that comes
with the carrot of federal money

[USurykeeping Operations] "Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad,
1798-2008," - CRS Report, February 2, 2009Hundreds of times in the last 210
years, the United States has deployed its military forces in
conflicts abroad, although the
U.S. has only formally declared war on eleven occasions. A newly
updated tabulation of those military deployments -- which do not
include covert actions, disaster relief, or military training exercises
-- has recently been prepared by the Congressional Research
Service. A copy of the updated report was obtained by Secrecy News

Naomi Klein Interview - By
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, February 2009In
2000, she became an instant sensation when she published No Logo, which
served as a manifesto for the anti-corporate, global justice movement.
After that, she chronicled the rebellion against neoliberalism in Latin
America. With her husband, Avi Lewis, she made a film called The Take, which is about autoworkers in Buenos Aires who
occupy their idle factory. A columnist for The Nation and The
Guardian, Klein published the monumental book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of
Disaster Capitalism in 2007, which systematically refutes the claim
that democracy and free markets are inseparable. In part, the book is a
history of U.S. imperialism since the overthrow of Allende’s Chile. And
in part, it’s an exposé on how
Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, the U.S. Treasury,
the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank all do the bidding
of U.S. corporations and banks, especially in times of crisis

Orwellian Doublethink: "Nationalize
the banks." "Free Markets." - by Prof. Michael Hudson, Global
Research, February 23, 2009The language of deception.
The rhetoric of "free markets," "nationalization" and even "socialism"
(as in "socializing the losses") has been turned into the language of
deception to help the financial sector mobilize government power to
support its own special privileges. Having undermined the economy at
large, Wall Street’s public relations think tanks are now dismantling
the language itself. The popular media should not let them get away
with it

On Transparency of the Fed - Ron
Paul, 02-23-2009The
Federal Reserve controls the flow of money and credit in our economy
because Congress has abdicated its responsibility over the nation’s
currency. This process therefore occurs centrally, and almost
completely outside the system of checks and balances. Because of legal
tender laws, people are left with no real choice, except to build their
lives and futures around this monopoly currency, vulnerable to powerful
central bankers (la stessa cosa la possiamo dire per la "Banca
d'Italia", la "BCE", etc.)

Book: The Emperor Wears No
Clothes - By Jack Herer, 2006This
book tell about the impact of cannabis on the US economy. Hemp was legal tender (money) in
most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800s. American
farmers were by law encouraged to grow more. One could pay own taxes
with cannabis hemp throughout America for over 200 years

US: Individual States Declaring Sovereignty
- By NWV News writer Jim Kouri, February 23, 2009While
the mainstream news media are hyping President Barack Obama's election
and the dismal economic downturn in the United States, more and more
states are declaring -- or have already declared -- sovereignty.
According to political experts such as strategist Mike Baker, Americans
are becoming disenchanted with the federal government's lack of
perspective on issues of great concern -- illegal aliens, crime,
economic turmoil -- while intruding into the private lives of citizens
with gun-control laws and other intrusions... "That this serve as a
Notice and Demand to the federal government to maintain the balance of
powers where the Constitution of the United States established it and to cease and desist, effective immediately,
any and all mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally
delegated powers."

Bank
Julius Baer millions of USD in trust for Mexican mass murderer and drug
trafficker Arturo Acosta Chaparro, 1998 - Wikileaks, February 23,
2009Bank Julius Baer trust records for
Arturo Acosta Chaparro, an infamous former Mexican police chief who was
responsible for the disappearance of 140 detainees in Guerrero and who
was convicted of drug-trafficing. He was accused of organising the
seizure, torture and murder of peasants who were suspected of helping
the rebels and, with particular persistence of overseeing 'flights of
death' in which well-tortured detainees were taken up in helicopters
and pushed out over the ocean while still alive

The Galvin Report: Audit of 160 EU
Parliament members, 2008 - From Wikileaks, February 23, 2009The
"Galvin Report", formally known as Internal Audit Report no. 06/02 of
the European Parliament Internal Audit Service. The report, named after
Robert Galvin, head auditor, and whose name appears on its front cover,
was initially written at the end of 2006 as an audit of the expenses
and allowances claimed by a sample of more than 160 MEPs. The existence
of the report was kept secret until an updated version in February saw
the fact of its existence made public by Chris Davies MEP. Even then,
its contents remained secret. An analysis of the report has been
prepared by the UK-based Tax Payers Alliance, who concurrently released
another version of report, before removing it from their website. Their
analysis is included in this archive. (In my opinion, the corruption
that arise from the great euro-seigniorage scam "MATRIX Treaty" is
sooooooo big that we need a special
Court like the Star Chamber. The Star Chamber - Latin: Camera stellata - was an English
court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It
was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges, and
supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both
civil and criminal matters. The
court was set up to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against
prominent people, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never
convict them of their crimes. Court sessions were held in
secret, with no indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no
witnesses. Evidence was presented in writing)

Secret
report reveals how MEPs make millions
- By Jonathan Oliver, Times Online, February 22, 2009A
LEAKED internal report has revealed systematic abuses by Euro MPs of
parliamentary allowances that enable them to pocket more than £1m in
profits from a single five-year term, writes Jonathan Oliver. The
auditor’s confidential report, suppressed by the Brussels parliament,
discloses the extraordinary frauds used by MEPs to siphon off staff
allowances funded by taxpayers

Dialogue:
Economic Empowerment
through Mobile - VodafoneMuch
has been claimed for the ability of mobile networks to extend
communications and consequently help the poor of developing countries
participate in economic activity. This is a complicated theory to test
and some have questioned its validity. They point out that it is
primarily the relatively affluent people in the developing world who
can afford mobile and therefore that the technology may actually
increase the gap between rich and poor in the developing world

Gunther Russbacher, CIA. ONI Discusses the
S&L Crisis [text & video] - RMNews, 23 February 2009Admiral Gunther K. Russbacher was a 30 plus year veteran of the CIA
and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Our Current Banking Crisis is a
Replay of the S&L Scandal
but on STEROIDS !"In Italy I worked
with counter revolutionaries and counter terrorists groups in liaison
with Italian intelligence staff and Carabinieri. Our objective was
Lotta Continua. The Brigate
Rosse, I infiltrated the groups to review and construct funding for our
own purposes so we could use them for our purposes. However, all
that went sour. I was in
Milan during the catastrophe, when they blew up the [Bologna] train
station and all those people died. Also I was on the train going north to
Trieste as they bombed the train out from underneath us. I
worked out of the US consular general's office in Genoa, held Swiss and German
passports under Gerhard Miller
and Wagner. I was attached to black consular operations, a special
operations group.""

Models
and Pseudo-models: Economists' Artifice - by Prof. John Kozy,
Global Research, February 22, 2009Classical/neoclassical
economics has now held sway for more than two hundred years, and
mathematical models have been built to support it for at least half of
that time. But the basic consequences of the theory have not changed
materially. The cycles of boom and bust continue to reoccur. Wealth is
created and then destroyed. People get jobs and lose them; get homes
and lose them; save money and lose it. It is an idiotic system. How
would we describe a person who built an edifice in a part of a river's
floodplain that is inundated every year or so and watched his edifice
disappear during each flood but continued to rebuild it in the same
place? Didn't Einstein call doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting a different result a form of insanity? The most difficult thing to
explain is why apparently intelligent people are either unable or
unwilling to recognize the idiocy

Did
you know that there is an explicit
bailout clause in the Maastricht Treaty? - EuroIntelligence,
18.02.2009There
you have it, Article 100, section 2 is the Bailout Clause. Nobody needs
to circumvent any laws. If, or rather when, Ireland evokes exceptional
circumstances beyond its control, there will be a meeting of finance
ministers, which by a qualified majority will decide on a bail out
Ireland

Economic
Crisis: How the Current Financial
Rescue Schemes are Following the Failed Model of the Hoover
Administration - by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, Global Research,
February 21, 2009Faced
with the financial meltdown of the Great Depression, the Hoover
administration created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that
poured taxpayers’ money into the coffers of the influential Wall Street
banks in an effort to save them from bankruptcy. Like today’s
Bush/Obama administrations, the Hoover administration used the
“too-big-to-fail” scare tactic in order to justify the costly looting
of the national treasury. All it did, however, was to simply postpone
the day of reckoning: almost all of the banks failed after nearly three
years of extremely costly bailouts schemes

An
Impending Geopolitical Earthquake? - by José Miguel Alonso
Trabanco, Global Research, February 21, 2009It
turns out that several European States (some with both NATO and
European Union membership) are already facing sociopolitical
complications that have been triggered by their severe financial and
economic difficulties (lack of credit, unemployment, currency
depreciation, external debt, GDP negative growth). If their situation deteriorates
further, an eventual deployment of NATO troops in one or more of its
members' territory is not unconceivable at all. The official
purpose would be the preservation of political stability. The unofficial (and real) goal
would be to prevent NATO-friendly governments from collapsing.
Iceland, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Poland and even Italy and France are
in a particularly dire position. According to Der Spiegel, Britain
itself (the very cradle of modern finance) is "on the brink of
financial ruin"

MONETIZE
THIS! A BETTER WAY TO FUND THE
STIMULUS PACKAGE - by Ellen Brown, OpEdNews, 2/21/09If
the Fed Can “Monetize” Private Debt, It Can Monetize Public Debt. The
Fed has been a hotbed of radical, experimental activity in the past
year. Ben Gisin is a former banker who has long been tracking the
Fed’s statistical releases. He says he has never seen anything
like it. Assets have been magically appearing on the Fed’s
balance sheet, and they are not coming from any traditional source...

CUMULATIVE IMPACTS: DEATH KNELL FOR
COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS - By Peter Montague, Rachel's Democracy &
Health News, February 19, 2009Introduction:
The impacts of our various economic activities are now adding up to a
damaged world -- a world in which Earth's natural capacity for
self-renewal has been exceeded and permanent degradation is evident.
Our legal and regulatory systems were never intended to limit the
accumulation of small impacts. Instead, U.S. law relies on cost-benefit
analysis to justify individual impacts -- a practice that is now
obsolete because it is destroying the planet as a place suitable for
human habitation

Bailouts,
Stimulus
Packages or Redistribution of Assets? - By Deanna Spingola, 19
February 2009To
establish a world government, it is necessary to incrementally
eradicate the constitution, bring the U.S. to her knees economically,
and shackle the taxpayers to perpetual debt through bailouts and
stimulus packages funded by printing billions of dollars of interest
and debt-bearing Federal Reserve Notes to drastically devalue the
currency in circulation thus impoverishing the taxpayers. The only
benefactors are the extant banks, certain corporations and the
individuals who concocted the financial disaster

Reform
the Monetary System - by Mike Whitney, Global Research, February
18, 2009A
Review of Richard Cook's book "We Hold These Truths"Il salvataggio bancario, un brutto scherzo
goliardico - di Marco Saba, 16 febbraio 2009Il
cosiddetto salvataggio delle banche non può che essere definito
altrimenti, alla luce del fatto che nel nostro sistema sono le banche a
creare dal niente la moneta legale e creditizia, attraverso il
meccanismo del "cinquantato credito" che deriva dal sistema della
"riserva frazionaria" al 2% (According to LEAP/E2020,
there is only one
very small launch window left to prevent the worst case scenario from
shaping up: the next four months,
before summer 2009. Practically speaking, the April 2009 G20 Summit is
probably the last chance to put on the right tracks the forces at play,
i.e. before the sequence of UK and then US defaults begin. Failing
which, they will lose their capacity to control events, including those
in their own countries for many of them; and the world will enter this phase of
geopolitical dislocation like a “drunken boat”. At the end of
this phase of geopolitical dislocation, the world will look more like
Europe in 1913 rather than our world in 2007)
In the summer of 1942, it was proposed to create a ghetto bank, with
each resident receiving a fixed amount of money depending in which of
five categories such resident belonged. The currency was designed
by Peter Kien and printed by the National Bank in Prague. The
other side of the scrip contains the printed signature of Jakob
Edelstein as the "Eldest of the Jews in Theresienstdat." The
notes are dated January 1, 1943, but did not go into circulation until
May, 1943

Ben Shalom, Yigal and Yitzhak Sabato, Negative
income tax and its effect on the labor market and the social security
system - 5th International Research Conference on Social Security:
Social security and the labour market: A mismatch?, 2007The
various plans to battle poverty among, and encourage employment of,
poor working families include a grant to low-wage workers’ families
that is known as negative income tax (NIT) or tax credit. The aim of
this measure, implemented in various countries, is to provide adequate
compensation to the working poor, to decrease poverty while increasing
employment at the same time. Chapter 3 relates to fundamental matters
that precede the implementation of NIT and details the alternatives
that are currently being discussed and their possible application to
Israel

If
Government Can Create Money from Nothing, Why Are We Still Paying Taxes?
- By Mike Adams, Natural News, February 11, 2009End
the IRS, let everybody keep the money they earn, end the stresses of
April 15th, and end all the billions of dollars wasted on filing taxes,
paying accountants to crunch numbers and paying government employees to
figure out if those numbers were crunched correctly (the question is:
if we could make it ourselves be why are we and every other nation on
earth borrowing it at compound interest from merchant bankers who seem
to want us dead?)

The De Moneta of Nicholas Oresme and
English Mint Documents - Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, New York, 1956From
the Mises Institute, DE MONETA (1360 a.d.) Tractatus de Origine, Natura
Jure, et Mutacionibus Monetariae compositus per Magistrum Nicolaum
Oresme Sacre Theologie Professorem. Nicholas maintained that money is the property of the
community, not of the ruler, and that, therefore, the ruler has an obligation to
preserve the purity of coinage and may not debase it. De moneta
is not always a realistic reflection of late medieval economy, but it
became very popular in the 17th century

Crisis
movie: The Take (La Toma,
2004) Youtube (1/9)
(2/9)
(3/9)
(4/9)
(5/9) (6/9) (7/9) (8/9) (9/9)Armed
only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the
workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that
sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale.
With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken
journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international
bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st
century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of
workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the
searing injustice of dignity denied. You better be prepared...

Financial Coup d’Etat -
Catherine Austin Fitts, The Solari Report, February 2, 2009In
the fall of 2001 I attended a private investment conference in London
to give a paper, The Myth of the Rule of Law or How the Money Works:
The Destruction of Hamilton Securities Group. The presentation
documented my experience with a Washington-Wall Street partnership that
had:
* Engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble;
* Illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the U.S.;
* Used “privitization” as form or piracy - a pretext to move government
assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift
private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private
liability holder... Slowly, as the pieces fit together, we shared a
horrifying epiphany: the banks, corporations and investors acting in
each global region were the exact same players. They were a relatively
small group that reappeared again and again in Russia, Eastern Europe,
and Asia accompanied by the same well-known accounting firms and law
firms.Clearly,
there was a global financial
coup d’etat underway...

After
a Boom, There Will Be Scandal. Count on It. - Kurt
Eichenwald, NYTimes, December 16, 2002Abstract:
Reviews the recent history of business cycles, showing that crooked
behavior by corporate officials is to be expected. "It's just part of
capitalism."

Monetary
Policy and
the U.S. Dollar - By Mike Hewitt, DollarDaze, February 10th, 2009This
essay analyzes the historic growth of the American monetary stock (or
aggregates) since 1960 and looks at some recent developments revealing
a marked adjustment in policy. These changes are a direct response to
the on-going worldwide financial crisis that escalated in September
2008 following the collapse of Lehman Brothers

Relative Child Poverty, Income
Inequality, Wealth, and Health - Journal of the American Medical
Association (pg. 425), January 28, 2009Exposure
to relative poverty or having a low socioeconomic position in childhood
has been associated with increased adult morbidity [sickness] and
mortality [death] resulting from (among other causes): stomach, liver,
and lung cancer; diabetes; coronary heart disease; stroke; respiratory
diseases; nervous system conditions; diseases of the digestive system;
alcoholic cirrhosis; unintentional injuries; and homicide

Colonies found a solution for the
problem of money - Ezra Pound, Radio Roma, May 28, 1942"Class
war is NOT an American product, not from the ROOTS of the nation. Not
in our historic process. And the RACIAL solution, which is Europe’s
solution, which is IN Europe’s process, rooted deep down,
un-uprootable. What about that? You have got to, or you someday will
have to study the American or United States historic process. Colonies
pretty much racially homogenous: evolved. They found a solution for the
problem of money, not of FIELDS against money, not of colonists,
farmers FIGHTING money, but of fields AND money working together, and
they found it in Pennsylvania and the world said “how marvelous.” And
an UNJUST usurious monopolist government shut down on the money. Money
handed out to the colonists to facilitate their FIELD production. The
repayment NOT going to a set of leeches and exploiters. And the unjust
monopolist government, namely the British, was hoofed out [of] the
colonies 30 years later. Are you proposin’ to do the same fool thing
NOW that the various London bleeders and scoundrels tried on the
American colonial people? Usury penetration, and trying to throttle
other field workers and planters?"

The Cook Plan
(Youtube video)Richard
C. Cook proposes "A Bailout for the People: Dividend Economics and the
Basic Income Guarantee."

Murdered Mexican General A Victim - But Of What? -
rense.com, By Richard C. Cook, 2-9-9Tello,
63, along with his bodyguard and a driver, were kidnapped in downtown
Cancun last Monday evening, taken to a hidden location, methodically
tortured, then driven out to the jungle and shot in the head... In the
1980s, after the Federal Reserve under Chairman Paul Volcker raised
interest rates above 20 percent, it wrecked the U.S. manufacturing
economy. The disaster turned whole areas in places like Baltimore,
Detroit, and L.A. into "death zones." Poverty, despair, and crime made
a comeback and hover over those areas today like dark clouds... I asked
them what people did for a living now that Michigan's manufacturing
industries were in such a decline. They said the young people there now make
and sell methamphetamine

Town Hall Meeting In New York Canceled Due
To Death Threat Against Monetary Reform Advocate Richard C. Cook
- rense.com, 2-7-9Cook
has written prolifically on economic and monetary reform since retiring
from the federal government as a Treasury Department analyst in 2007.
During his 32-year government career he also worked for NASA and the
Carter White House. Upon retirement he published his book, We Hold
These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform. Through what he is calling
the "Cook Plan," he is
advocating a tax-free per capita payment of $1,000 per month through
vouchers to be used for the necessities of life such as housing, food,
and transportation. The vouchers, once redeemed, would be used
to capitalize a new national network of community savings banks that
would lend at low interest rates to revitalize local and regional
economies

COINAGE FOR REDEEMING THE FIRST BORN:
AN ANCIENT AND MODERN JEWISH RITUAL - by Ronn BerrolThe
Pidyon Ha-Ben is a religious ceremony that has been practiced by the
Jewish people since biblical times. In Exodus (13:2), God specifically
commands to Moses this redemption, “Consecrate all of the firstborn to
me, the firstborn from every womb among the Israelites”. Later,
in the desert the Jewish people lost faith in God and built a golden
calf. Only the tribe of Levi did not participate in this
reversion to pagan rituals. After this episode God commanded that
the tribe of Levi would serve the Priesthood in place of the first
born, and that the first born should be redeemed from the priest

"Share
Our Wealth" - Huey Long of Louisiana, January 1935"We
guarantee food and clothing and employment for everyone who should work
by shortening the hours of labor to thirty hours per week, maybe less,
and to eleven months per year, maybe less. We would have the hours
shortened just so much as would give work to everybody to produce
enough for everybody." Long was a staunch opponent of the Federal
Reserve Bank. Together with a group of Congressmen and Senators, Long
believed the Federal Reserve's policies to be the true cause of the
Great Depression. Long made speeches denouncing the large banking
houses of Morgan and Rockefeller centered in New York which owned stock
in the Federal Reserve System. He believed that they controlled the monetary
system to their own benefit, instead of the general public's
benefit.Some economists claimed that if the Share Our Wealth plan was
implemented it would bring an end to the Great Depression. They pointed
out that one of the major causes of the economic downturn was the insufficient distribution of
purchasing power among the population. If poor
families had their incomes increased they would spend this extra money
on goods being produced by American industry and agriculture and would
therefore stimulate the economy and create
more jobs

Huey
P. Long was murdered on September 8, 1935, at 42

"So it has been
that while millions have
starved and gone naked; so it has been that while babies have cried and died
for milk; so it has been that while people have begged for meat
and bread, Mr. Roosevelt's
administration has sailed merrily along, plowing under and
destroying the things to eat and to wear, with tear-dimmed eyes and
hungry souls made to chant for this new deal so that even their
starvation dole is not taken away, and meanwhile the food and clothes
craved by their bodies and souls go for destruction and ruin. What is
it? Is it government? Maybe so. It looks more like St. Vitus dance."

Open
letter to Dr. Joseph Stiglitz - By Richard C. Cook, DandelionSalad,
2-5-9The
debt-based monetary system acts as a parasite on the producing economy,
resulting in the vast overhang of debt that can never be repaid.
"Resuscitating the flow of lending" will do no good, because the collapse of consumer
purchasing power due to job outsourcing and income stagnation has made
it impossible for people to pay their debts. Most of this debt
now needs to be written off and our producing economy restored as our
chief source of wealth

Madoff Victims Lists
- Cryptome, 5 February 2009From
the web site of the US Bankruptcy Court, Southern District New York

Parallels With the Great Depression
- by Charles Scaliger, The New American, 04 February 2009The
RFC was an abysmal failure, though not for want of trying. Under Meyer
the new vehicle for bank and railroad bailouts doled out money right
and left, only to see the bank and railroad failures continue apace. Hundreds of millions of dollars
poured down various RFC rat holes were lost forever by hopelessly
insolvent institutions whose only remaining aim was to service their
debts and provide soft landings for major investors. The
promised loosening of credit never took place, and commercial lending
all but disappeared. The RFC, in a word, was a huge waste of taxpayer
dollars at a time when America could ill afford such coerced largesse

[fas.org]
CIA: Guide
to the Analysis of InsurgencyThis
pamphlet contains key definitions and analytic guides applicable to any
insurgency.... Among other things, this guide is designed to assist in
conducting a net assessment of the overall status or progress of a
specific conflict, the document states. The CIA guide is undated,
but may have been written in the 1980s

Altre News
- feb 2009 (As things get worse,
more people will become disillusioned with the system and look for
explanations)The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping real
reason - Dick Eastman, Feb 28, 2009Lindbergh's father blamed
International Jewry for WW1, and contended the Federal Reserve was just
another Jewish con. When his son Charles became a hero, the way was
paved for him to run for the presidency...

The
"Great Financial Crisis": A whole new
kind of struggle is emerging: Interview with John Bellamy Foster
- by Mike Whitney, Global Research, February 27, 2009The sudden fall of the
governments in Iceland and Latvia as a result of protests against
financial theft is remarkable, as are the widespread revolts in Greece
and throughout the EU, with millions in the streets. The general
strikes in Guadeloupe and Martinique, the French Antilles, and the
support given to these movements by the French New Anti-Capitalist
Party is a breakthrough. In fact much of the world is in ferment. Latin
Americans are engaged in a full-scale revolt against neoliberalism, led
by Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, and the aspiration of a new
socialism for the 21st century (as envisioned also in Bolivia, Ecuador
and Cuba). The Nepalese revolution has offered new hope in Asia. Social
struggles on a major scale are occurring in emerging economies such as
Brazil, Mexico, and India. China itself is experiencing unrest

The last desperate efforts of Japan’s
colonial occupation slave regime to survive - Benjamin
Fulford, 02/27/2009Since opinion polls show
the current occupation regime is going to be wiped out in a general
election that has to be held by September there are plans being made to
set up a new party. The foreign occupation regime and their Japanese
flunkies are trying to steal money from the Japanese postal savings
bank in order to finance this new party

Regulating
the regulators - David Cronin, guardian.co.uk, Saturday 28 February
2009After years of denial,
the European commission has realised that financial services need
regulation. But don't hold your breath. McCreevy and his aides will
probably listen attentively at a conference on hedge funds that they're
hosting this week, as they add a last touch of minimalist finesse to
their proposals. Having opened a "public consultation" exercise on this
dossier, their job is to assess a variety of options. You can be sure,
though, that one option they're not examining is banning hedge funds
outright, as the German authorities did before 2004

Central banks don't want their
leased gold back - Gata.org, February 27, 2009For years prior to 2000,
gold leasing fueled what was called the gold carry trade. Investment
houses leased gold from central banks, paying the central banks a tiny
annual interest rate, usually well below 1 percent of the value of the
gold leased, and then sold the gold into the market and invested the
proceeds in government bonds, earning perhaps 5 percent annually... (it
is very easy to became very rich if you have friends in the central
bank...they have sovereign immunity against lawsuit - Al Capone's dream)

Death Offers Lifeline to Italian Property
as Economy Worsens - By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Flavia Rotondi,
Bloomberg, Feb. 26, 2009The 60 square-meter,
one-bedroom abode is a steal at 195,000 euros ($251,000), says Grasso,
who works for the Top Casa real estate agents in Rome. “You just have to wait a bit,” she
says. By waiting, Grasso means for the owner to die. Deep in the
fine print of the sale documents is a number, “88” in parentheses. It’s
the seller’s age

Hungary
on edge of bankruptcy - By Damien McElroy in Budapest, Telegraph,
27 Feb 2009Hungary is teetering on
the edge of bankruptcy with its citizens struggling to pay off mortages
and personal loans taken out in foreign currency during one of the
post-Communist era's most exhuberant booms. Hundreds of debtors in
default have turned to a volunteer organisation, the Association of
Bank Loan Victims, for advice on saving their homes from repossession

'There
will be blood' - HEATHER SCOFFIELD, Globe and Mail, February 23,
2009Harvard economic
historian Niall Ferguson: “There will be blood, in the sense that a
crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as
economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will
cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple
governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are
extreme."

Europe's
Crisis: Much Bigger Than Subprime, Worse Than U.S. - by Henry
Blodget, Yahoo!Finance, Feb 27, 2009John Mauldin, president
of Millennium Wave Advisors, was among the few analysts whose forecasts
for 2008 proved accurate. Mauldin, author of the popular "Thoughts from
the Frontline" e-letter, joined us to discuss the economic situation in
Eastern Europe

Confidence
in Asian Benevolence - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning,
02/27/09So, with our houses
declining in value by a third, our investments down by half, higher
prices for things we need to live, being laid off at increasingly
alarming rates and with a government that has lost its freaking mind,
it’s a wonder that any people have any confidence at all! Hahaha! Who the hell ARE those people and
what are they smoking? Hahaha!

America in Critical Condition -
by CJ Graham, NewsWithViews.com, February 28, 2009"If the American People
ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by
inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will
grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until
their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers
conquered..." --Thomas Jefferson

Angry Citizens Revive Boston Tea Party
Protest - Jennifer Bocchieri, KAKE-10, February 27, 2009Wichita is one of more
than 40 cities that will hold simultaneous tea parties. Protesters say
it’s time taxpayers to come together and demand to be heard. It was all
the way back in 1773 when American colonists held the Boston Tea Party.
They pitched crates of tea into the harbor to protest British taxation

Banks
of the government and of robbery - Beppe Grillo, 26 February 2009The banks and the
regulatory authorities are the main ones responsible for the financial
catastrophe. In the last few years, Where have the Bank of Italy,
Consob, ABI, the Ministers of the Treasury been? People like Tremorti
and Padoa Schioppa? Like Fazio and Draghi? Like Geronzi, Passera, and
Profumo? The mayors who have invested the taxes of the citizens in
derivatives? The financial analysts? The economic journalists? People
like Cardia and Capuano? The rubbish shares, the futures without a
future, the subprime sub-primes, the CDOs, the holes in the balance
sheets, the banking liabilities without guarantees. Either these gentlemen knew
everything and thus are criminals and should be prosecuted, or they are
incompetents and should be sacked as soon as possible

Optimism
in the Face of Inflation - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning,
02/26/09I did not mention that
there are only about 100 million non-government, non-taxpayer paid
workers in the U.S.A., which means that there are only 100 million
workers who can make a profit with which to pay taxes, which means that
$5 trillion in government spending is a staggering $50,000 for Every
Freaking One (EFO) of those non-government, non-taxpayer paid
positions! And you think THAT is going to work out for the best?
Hahahaha!

CIA Adds Economy To Threat Updates
- Joby Warrick, Washington Post, February 26, 2009The addition of economic
news to the daily roundup of terrorist attacks and surveillance reports
appears to reflect a growing belief among intelligence officials that
the economic meltdown is now preeminent among security threats facing
the United States

Hungary on edge of bankruptcy -
Damien McElroy, Telegraph, February 26, 2009Hungarians have become
aware that the fall out from their folly will stretch far from the
Danube's banks. "What's happening here means that all of Europe is
going to suffer because you can't have one country drop out of its
element without affecting all the continent," said Mr Gulyas

Greeks
shut airports, services to protest economy
- Renee Maltezou, Reuters, February 26, 2009Greeks disgruntled by
their country\u2019s economic woes ramped up protests against the
government, shutting down airports and disrupting many public services

[No bailout? No party!] Bailout
Bank Blows Millions Partying in L.A. - TMZ, Feb 24th 2009Now how's this for
outrage? Northern Trust laid off 450 workers in December, 4% of its
workforce. And here's what's absolutely amazing: The United States
Government flat out gave Northern Trust the $1.6 billion in bailout
money, and the bank didn't even request it! Northern Trust gave us a
statement yesterday before going total radio silence. A rep for the
bank acknowledges they paid for the events, but that the bailout money
did not pay for the events. He claims it was paid out of the bank's
customers money

Two Major Fraud Cases Reach N.Y.
Federal Court - Tom Hays and Larry Neumeister, The Associated
Press, February 26, 2009Federal authorities
brought charges in two major securities fraud investigations Wednesday,
saying one scheme fell apart because of publicity about the Bernard
Madoff scandal. In that case, New Jersey fund manager James Nicholson
was accused of defrauding investors of as much as $900 million since
2004. In the second case, Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh were charged
with conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud

Feds Win Detention for Disbarred Lawyer in Alleged
Investment Scam - Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal,
February 26, 2009The Bail Reform Act is
getting a real workout during the latest spat of white-collar criminal
prosecutions in the Southern District of New York. The government won
the most recent round Wednesday when Judge Denise Cote set virtually
unreachable bail conditions for Arthur Nadel, a disbarred lawyer turned
hedge fund adviser accused of swindling investors out of tens of
millions of dollars

President Ronald Reagan Was Shot Over Fed
and IRS! - Rich Sheridan, Feb 24, 2009Ronald Reagan was promptly shot after he
dared to criticize the Fed, on the same day that the Pope was shot.
After recovering, he changed his mind and praised the Fed. About seven
US Presidents have been assassinated for not cooperating with the
Transatlantic Banking Dynasties (William Henry Harrison, poisoned, in
1841, Zachary Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and John F. Kennedy
1963; 7 if FDR’s poisoning is counted)

Go Ahead, Make My Money - By The
Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/25/09Total Fed Credit,
otherwise known as Federal Reserve Credit, ballooned by a huge $76.9
billion last week, taking the Fed’s total “help” to the scumbag banks
to a nice, cool $1.9 trillion, of which a whopping $56 billion gob of
the money created last week by the Fed was used by the Fed itself to
buy Treasury securities for itself! Hahaha! What a scam!

Journalists’
groups blast European Commission ’spies’ smear - Spectrezine,
February 24th, 2009It is a legitimate and
essential part of a democracy to allow reporters to ask searching
questions and get access to documents some politicians and officials
would prefer for their own vested interests to keep out of sight,” said
Lorenzo Consoli, the President of API

Demise of
Petters Ponzi Scheme Making Work for Minnesota Firms - Zach Lowe,
The American Lawyer, February 25, 2009Nearly a dozen Petters
Group entities have filed for bankruptcy since October, when federal
authorities charged Minnesota-based corporate magnate Tom Petters with
money laundering, wire fraud and mail fraud in connection with an
alleged Ponzi scheme that may have cost investors north of $2 billion.
Now nearly 20 law firms, all with some Minnesota ties, are reaping the
benefits of the civil and criminal cases linked to the Petters empire

Nation Instinctively Forms Breadline
- The Onion, February 24, 2009'What's happening here?'
said a California resident after seeing a group of bankers leaning
against a broken-down jalopy, their feet muddied and bare. "We've lost
everything," said Janice Mann, an Iowa native, who watched helplessly
as dozens of so-called Bushvilles sprung up across her state. "The
land, the house—it's all gone. They say this could last an entire
decade. That it's going to get worse before it gets any better."

Stanford
Clients Sending Out an SOS - Wayne Tompkins, Daily Business Review,
February 25, 2009Over 20 years, R. Allen
Stanford's companies and his distinctive eagle logo became an
established fixture in South Florida, a key outpost of the billionaire
banker's financial empire. But longtime observers say they remained
suspicious. Now, in the wake of last week's SEC lawsuit accusing
Stanford of a "massive" fraud, international banking attorneys are
being deluged by Stanford clients fearing the worst and hoping that
somehow their money can be recovered

The
Fine Art of Overbilling - Brian Baxter, The American Lawyer,
February 25, 2009While the billable hour
is still alive and kicking, legal bloggers are opining on some of the
more nefarious means of separating clients from their hard-earned cash.
And we're not talking about bill padding, but good old-fashioned,
fraudulent overbilling. For instance, Bitter Lawyer features the
anonymous Philadelphia Lawyer's list of eight routine overbilling
scams...

Bank Of
America Heiress Blasts Bank Leaders
As 'Idiots' - CBS5.com, Feb 24, 2009The granddaughter of the
man who founded Bank of America in San Francisco in the early 1900s
called the bank's current condition "totally repulsive" and blasted the
bank's management for being "idiots." The harsh criticism from Virginia
Hammerness, the heiress to A.P. Giannini's family fortune and a
significant stockholder in the bank he launched, came during an
interview Monday with CBS 5

ECB faces mutiny from national bank
governors as recession deepens - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,
Telegraph, 23 Feb 2009The European Central Bank
is capitulating. Mr Trichet said the ECB has increased its balance
sheet by €600bn (£525bn) since the Lehman collapse in September. The
bank is providing "unlimited liquidity" in exchange for a wide range of
collateral, including mortgage bonds issued for the sole purpose of
extracting ECB funds

Chinese
officials trained to handle social
unrest - By GILLIAN WONG, AP, February 24, 2009Thousands of Chinese
police are being trained to deal with social unrest amid concerns that millions of rural workers who have
been laid off due to a sharp economic downturn could take to the streets,
the government said Monday

Nationalize the Banks - By
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, February 2009The banks got us into
this financial mess in the first place by making unwise home loans and
by speculating in unregulated credit-default swaps tied to those loans.
They have taken
the entire world economy down with them. They don’t deserve to be
bailed out

Yen Could Crash Following Collapsing
Japanese Economy - The Market Oracle, Feb 24, 2009According to The Tokyo
Shinbun , more than 30% of Japan's prefectures (governmental bodies
larger than cities , towns , and villages ) have already implemented
emergency economic measures of their own. Overall, unemployment rose to
4.4% in December, the worst such figure recorded in 42 years. Tent
cities are growing and many public parks are now overflowing with
homeless people - something I recall seeing during the depths of
Japan's last “ Lost Decade .”

Former
Merrill Lynch CEO Ordered to Testify About Billions in Bonuses -
Ieva M. Augstums and Stephen Bernard, The Associated Press, February
24, 2009A New York judge has
ordered former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to testify about $3.6
billion in bonuses paid to Merrill employees before the company was
sold to Bank of America. Initial reports of the bonuses came just days
after BofA received $20 billion from the government that it said it
needed to help offset the losses it was absorbing from the Merrill
acquisition. New York's attorney general subpoenaed Thain last month in
connection with his office's investigation into the timing of the
bonuses

Worse than terrorists: City
fraudsters are treated far too leniently, says former DPP - By Paul
Waugh, Daily Mail, 24th February 2009Writing in the Times, the former Director of Public
Prosecutions said: 'If you mug someone in the street and you are
caught, the chances are that you will go to prison. 'In recent years,
mugging someone out of their savings or their pension would probably
earn you a yacht.' 'In Britain,
no one has any confidence that fraud in the banks will be prosecuted as
a crime. But it is absolutely critical to public confidence that
it should be.' (sarà ora davvero che la magistratura si dia una bella
svegliata!)﻿Robust:
Former legal chief Sir Ken
Macdonald
says bank fraud is worse than terrorism‘Black
Swan’ Author Sees Trouble Exceeding
1930s - DealBook, February 23, 2009The world has a much more
complex financial system than in the 1930s, Mr. Taleb told Bloomberg
Television, and that makes the current problems worse. Bonuses paid on
Wall Street encouraged risk-taking with no regard for losses, he added

Will Germany deliver on devil's bargain of
monetary union? - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph,
February 23, 2009Architects of EMU were
well aware that a one-size-fits-all monetary policy for vastly
disparate nations would create serious tensions over time. They gambled
that this would work to their advantage. The EU would be forced to
create new machinery to safeguard its investment in the euro. It would
be a "beneficial crisis", bringing about the great leap forward to full
union. We are about to find out if they were right

Gold
in the Art of Bread Consumption - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily
Reckoning, 02/23/09Stephen Harmston,
erstwhile economist at Bannock Consulting, wrote that “across 2,500 years, gold has
retained its purchasing power, relative to bread at least” which
is seemingly proved when one considers that “It is said that an ounce
of gold bought 350 loaves of bread in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, king
of Babylon, who died in 562 BC” which is roughly what it buys today, a
stretch of 2,500 years, while
the dollar, on the other hand, has lost 97% of its buying power since
1913, less than 100 years ago, when the detestable Federal
Reserve was given its diabolical unholy control of the nation’s banks
and money by a corrupt Congress and allowed by a corrupt Supreme Court
(e poi insistiamo a diffondere questo modello di suprema corruzione con
le cosiddette operazioni internazionali di pace...e se si ribellano
diciamo che i terroristi sono loro! sveglia gente!)

[IRS MAFIA] Lawyer
Charges IRS Retaliated Against Him for Complaint Over Agent's Practices
- Mary Pat Gallagher, New Jersey Law Journal, February 23, 2009Tax lawyer Robert Kenny
says he's paying a steep price for taking on the Internal Revenue
Service on behalf of clients: a retaliatory strike that has put his
livelihood and his law license at risk. In a federal suit, Kenny
alleges that when he complained to the Treasury Inspector General for
Tax Administration that an IRS agent was telling taxpayers to forgo
representation, the IRS lodged a complaint against him. Kenny says he's
gone public about the dispute to protect himself from what he calls a
"Star Chamber proceeding."

Safaricom
and Vodafone launch M-PESA, a new mobile payment service - 13
February 2007Safaricom, the leading
mobile communications provider in Kenya, is pleased to announce the
launch of M-PESA, an innovative new mobile payment solution that
enables customers to complete simple financial transactions by mobile
phone. M-PESA has been developed by Vodafone, the world’s leading
mobile telecommunications group, with the pilot in Kenya operated by
Safaricom (Vodaphone discovered the temporary-seigniorage business)

As
Doubts Grow, U.S. Will Judge Banks’
Stability - By EDMUND L. ANDREWS, NYTimes, February 22, 2009
The Obama administration
will begin taking a hard look at the financial condition of the
country’s 20 biggest banks this week to judge whether they could hold
up even if the downturn worsens further than policy makers already
expect (Yes they can - because they are allowed to create money out of
thin air)

Baltic
Currency-Peg Defense Cuts Reserves Amid Slump - By Aaron Eglitis,
Bloomberg, Feb. 23, 2009Central bankers and
government officials in the three countries, across the Baltic Sea from
Sweden and Finland, say they will stick to their course toward adoption
of the euro. The Lithuanian litas and the Estonian kroon entered the
exchange-rate mechanism, the waiting room to join the euro, in 2004,
just after the nations joined the European Union

Latvian Government Resigns as
Recession Deepens - By Aaron Eglitis, Bloomberg, Feb. 20, 2009Latvia’s four-party
coalition government, facing the steepest economic decline in the
European Union and plunging public opinion ratings, resigned after two
parties called for Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis to step down

Anarchists
plan City riot for day G20 leaders
arrive in London - By Robert Mendick and Nigel Rosser, Daily
Mail, 20th February 2009Anti-globalisation activists are plotting a mass
demonstration against bankers in the heart of the City of London,
it was revealed today. Protesters hope to mobilise 'anti-fatcat'
sentiment among students and workers affected by the credit crunch as
they demonstrate against the financial system, and are inviting
activists to 'set up camp' in Britain's financial centre. An anarchist
wrote in an online 'blog': 'The combination of the recession, the
inspiration of the Greek anarchists and the G20 summit being in London on
2 April gives us the opportunity to mobilise far larger than usual
numbers on to the streets... Seize the time.'
More soon than later, the Police will guess on which side they have to
stand

Soros Confirms Lindsey William’s
Assertion Oil is a Weapon
- Kurt Nimmo, Infowars, February 20, 2009The globalist George
Soros at the elite confab last month in Davos, Switzerland, admit that
the price of oil is being used as a weapon against the “enemies of the
prevailing world order,” i.e, the New World Order. Soros pegs these
enemies as Venezuela, Iran, and Russia (essendo entrati in modalità Muoia
Sansone, gli oligarchi del Nuovo
Ordine Mondiale - quello del Grande Banchiere dell'Universo -
vanno verso il suicidio economico collettivo)

Glenn
Beck scares Fox host into hiding under table - David Edwards and
Muriel Kane, Raw Story, February 21, 2009"What we are possibly
looking at is something far worse than the Depression," Beck began. "We
are in much greater debt as individuals. We don’t know how to grow our
own food. We’re also looking at civil unrest all around the world," he
continued. "You need to prepare. This is something that could be …
really dangerous. … My hands, now, for the first time in my life, are
shaking. … We’re running out of exit ramps here."

Unwashed Coffee Mugs:
How the recession is affecting family relationships - By Emily
Bazelon, Slate, Feb. 20, 2009,Recession means worry—all
too tangible worry, like making mortgage payments. And the intangible
but no less consuming fear of how unemployment is affecting your
laid-off wife or girlfriend—or, more often, husband or boyfriend. The
data showing that men have experienced 82 percent of the recession's
job losses suggest that we're in a moment of uninvited cultural shift

The
famous faces that fooled Stanford clients - Jamie Doward and
Rajeev Syal, The Observer, 22 February 2009Sir Allen Stanford's
empire came crashing down last week in an $8bn fraud inquiry that is
now set to extend to Britain. Jamie Doward and Rajeev Syal reveal how
the Texan tycoon manipulated his links with royals, sports stars and
politicians to give his credentials a veneer of credibility - and why
it took so long for the alarm to sound

Israel:
Treasury officials lash
out at Fischer - By JPOST.COM STAFF, Feb 22, 2009The Treasury officials
accused Fischer of acting contrary to law by instructing the BoI to buy
government bonds in the stock market. "We offered a solution, but the
Bank of Israel told us not to intervene," the officials reportedly
said, adding that "they have come up with a grandiose plan" which won't
help the economy

Silver Falls Bank, Silverton, OR
- By Tony. FDIC FAILED BANKS, February 20th, 2009The FDIC moved in without
warning and seized Silver Falls Bank, Silverton, OR, making it the 14th
bank closed by the agency in 2009 and the second in Oregon in eight days

[seigniorage masters under the spotlight] Ireland:
Call to name the 'golden
circle' as 100,000 march - By DON LAVERY and JEROME REILLY,
Independent, February 22 2009City brought to a
standstill by economic protest. Outside Government buildings, Ictu
general-secretary David Begg accused those responsible for the crisis
of economic treason and called for those in the 'golden circle'. "We are entitled to know who they
are if we are funding them," he said to huge cheers. He
acknowledged the fear and anger in the community over job losses and
conceded "no one is safe, there is nowhere to go"

[silent coup] Rothschild
Agents Take 10 Key Posts In Obama Administration - By Michael
Collins Piper, American Free Press, 2-21-9Susan Rice - ambassador to
the UN; Michael McFaul
- head of the Russian desk at the National Security Council; Elena Kagan - solicitor
general of the United States; Anne-Marie
Slaughter - State Department policy planning staff; Neal S.Wolin - deputy
counsel to the president for economic policy; Ezekial Emanuel - senior
counselor at the White House Office of Management and Budget on health
care policy; Lawrence Summers
- head of the National Economic Council; Peter Orszag - director of
the Office of Management and Budget; Peter Rouse - senior
advisor to the president; Mona
Sutphen - deputy chief of the White House staff

[tutti contro tutti] Swiss
party wants to punish U.S. for UBS probe - Reuters, Feb 21, 2009The SVP said gold stored
by the Swiss National Bank in the United States should be repatriated
and Switzerland should ban the sale of U.S. funds in the country to
protect Swiss investors after the failure of U.S. regulators

Ireland: 'The nation faces ruin' as
our TDs squabble - By JODY CORCORAN, Independent, February 22 2009Moves for an all-party
emergency government gather momentum. But the Fine Gael leader, Enda
Kenny yesterday resisted such moves, calling instead for a general
election. Mr Kenny also denied he had a secret meeting with a senior
executive of Anglo Irish Bank, two weeks ago, during which confidential
matters relating to the so-called 'golden circle' at the bank was
discussed

["controllo" demografico] Economic
downturn endangers German
birth rate rise - Reuters, Feb 16, 2009Germany, which is facing
its worst recession since World War Two, is worried about the strain on
the pension, health and welfare systems if its already aging population
shrinks further. Some studies show the population could dip below 70
million by 2050 from about 82 million

CUMULATIVE IMPACTS: DEATH KNELL FOR
COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS - By Peter Montague, Rachel's Democracy &
Health News, February 19, 2009Introduction: The impacts
of our various economic activities are now adding up to a damaged world
-- a world in which Earth's natural capacity for self-renewal has been
exceeded and permanent degradation is evident. Our legal and regulatory
systems were never intended to limit the accumulation of small impacts.
Instead, U.S. law relies on cost-benefit analysis to justify individual
impacts -- a practice that is now obsolete because it is destroying the
planet as a place suitable for human habitation

Ex-employees
of Allen Stanford raised warnings 'years ago' - David Byers, and
Matt Spence, Times Online, February 20, 2009Senior staff at the
Houston-based bank of the Texan billionaire disclosed today that they
had been concerned as early as 2003 about the cricket impresario's
financial dealings. However, no action was taken by the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) until Mr Stanford’s operations were raided
and shut down on Tuesday

UK
"could experience a crash similar to Iceland" - HedgeWeek, 18 Feb
2009,The global financial
crisis could be entering a 'new and more treacherous phase', which
could push international countries to the brink of failure and further
hinder the global economic recovery, according to Hennessee Group

Gold:
Finding Honest Money in the Midwest - By The Mogambo Guru, The
Daily Reckoning, 02/20/09The best news is towards
the end, where she reports that “any move toward a new international
monetary system based on gold will more likely take place through the
grass-roots efforts of Americans” like, for instance, “The Indiana
Honest Money Act” which would “allow citizens the option of paying in
or receiving back gold, silver or the equivalent electronic receipt as
an alternative to Federal Reserve notes for all transactions conducted
with the state of Indiana.”

Czech
president compares EU to Soviet Union - By CONSTANT BRAND,
Associated Press Writer Constant Brand, Associated Press, Feb 19, 2009The European Union has
turned into an undemocratic and elitist project comparable to the
Communist dictatorships of eastern Europe that forbade alternative
thinking, Czech President Vaclav Klaus told the European Parliament on
Thursday. Klaus, whose country now holds the rotating EU presidency,
set out a scathing attack on the EU project and its institutions,
provoking boos from many lawmakers, some of whom walked out, but
applause from nationalists and other anti-EU legislators

UBS Settlement Not a Complete Victory
for Feds, Says Tax Lawyer - Brian Baxter, The American Lawyer,
February 20, 2009While the deferred
prosecution agreement reached between Swiss banking giant UBS and
federal prosecutors on Wednesday might have initially looked like a
great deal for the government, in reality the Zurich-based bank isn't
disclosing nearly as many client names as law enforcement officials are
suggesting, says Miller & Chevalier tax partner George Clarke III. Clarke says the Justice Department's decision to file
suit against UBS on Thursday in Miami is evidence of this

[blackmail] Kissinger's
recovery plan: NWO or 'chaos' - Australia.toHudson calls it “Stage
One of a two-stage plan”, so far unannounced, to transfer trillions
more to people who, in any sane world, would be behind bars, the
purpose being to re-inflate the bubble economy that made them wealthy
beyond their dreams while leaving wages stagnant and creating little
meaningful work

Bank's Failure to Purchase Securities
Alleged to Breach Consumer Fraud Act - Michael Booth, New Jersey
Law Journal, February 19, 2009The New Jersey Supreme
Court is poised to decide whether a bank is liable under the Consumer
Fraud Act for an employee's failure to deliver on a promise to buy
securities for a client. The banking industry is watching the case
closely, since a pro-plaintiff ruling carries the prospect of treble
damages and counsel fees

UBS to Open Secret Swiss Bank Records
- By DEVLIN BARRET, AP, 19 febbraio 2009Banking giant UBS has
agreed to pay $780 million and turn over once-secret Swiss banking
records to settle allegations it conspired to defraud the U.S.
government of taxes owed by thousands of American clients

New foreclosure defense: Prove I owe you
- Chris O'Meara, AP, Feb. 17, 2009Homeowners demand lenders
produce original documents — some can’t. "I'm going to hang on for dear
life until they can prove to me it belongs to them," says Kathy
Lovelace, a 50-year-old divorced mother who owns a $200,000 home in
Zephyrhills, near Tampa. "I'll try everything I can because it's all I
have left." April Charney, head of foreclosure defense for Jacksonville
Area Legal Aid in Florida, said the strategy has been so successful for
her that she now travels around the country to train other lawyers in
how to use it. She said she has gotten cases delayed for years by
demanding that lenders produce paperwork they cannot find

The
Government-Based Economy - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Rekoning,
02/18/09Since we have a fiat
currency, a corrupt Congress and a complicit Federal Reserve, then
let’s really get this thing in gear! I mean, it would be child’s play
for Congress to order the Federal Reserve – which controls our banks –
to put electronic money into each of our bank accounts! It’s literally
as easy at that!

Bank of England votes for
'quantitative easing' - The Telegraph, February 18, 2009The 9-0 vote by the MPC
was revealed in the minutes of the meeting held on February 5. The
Bank's Governor, Mervyn King, will now write to Alistair Darling, the
Chancellor, to ask for approval to introduce measures aimed at raising
the supply of money in the economy – known as quantitative easing

SHAIKHA
SABEEKA AND PRINCE TALAL ATTEND LAUNCH
OF CREATIVITY BANK - bna.bh, February 11, 2009SHAIKHA SABEEKA WAS
SPEAKING TODAY AT THE LAUNCH OF THE CREATIVITY BANK, ATTENDED BY THE
PRESIDENT OF THE ARAB GULF PROGRAMME FOR UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT
ORGANIZATIONS (AGFUND) PRINCE TALAL BIN ABDUL AZIZ AL SAUD, AT THE SCW
PREMISES. SHAIKHA SABEEKA COMMENDED THE SIGNIFICANT EFFORTS OF PRINCE
TALAL IN DEVELOPMENT AND HUMANITARIAN AREAS WHICH BENEFITED DEPRIVED
CATEGORIES OF THE SOCIETY ACROSS THE ARAB WORLD. WITH THE LAUNCH OF THE
CREATIVITY BANK, BAHRAIN ACCOMMODATES A PIONEERING DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
FOR THREE DECADES

Nationalists
hijack Dresden ceremony in the biggest far-right demonstration since
Hitler - By Tony Paterson, Independent, 14 February 2005Holger Apfel, 33, leader
of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), which won seats in
the Saxony state parliament in Dresden last October, appeared with
other nationalist leaders to denounce the British and Americans as
"mass murderers and gangsters". "They have left a trail of blood that
stretches from Dresden to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and possibly Iran," Mr
Apfel told the crowd to enthusiastic applause and chants of
"murderers". He added: "We must not allow Germany to become the
accomplices of American gangster policy."

Trouble
at Treasury: Geithner gets the keys
to the henhouse - by Mike Whitney, Information Clearinghouse
- 2009-02-18In truth, Geithner did us
all a big favor on Tuesday by exposing himself as a stooge of the
banking industry. Now everyone can see that the banks are working the
deal from the inside. Geithner has assembled a phalanx of Wall Street
flim-flam men to fill out the roster at Treasury. "His chief-of-staff
is lobbyist from Goldman Sachs. The new deputy secretary of state is a
former CEO of Citigroup. Another CFO from Citigroup is now assistant to
the president, and deputy national security adviser for International
Economic Affairs. And one of his deputies also came from Citigroup. One
new member of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board comes
from UBS, which is currently being investigated for helping rich
clients evade taxes." The Obama White House is a beehive of big money
guys and Wall Street speculators

Next
Wave of Banking Crisis to come from
Eastern Europe - by F. William Engdahl, Global Research,
February 18, 2009Moody’s Rating Service
has just announced it ‘might’ downgrade a number of western European
banks with large exposures to eastern Europe. On the report, the Euro
fell to 2 and a half month lows against the dollar. The Moodys report
mentioned especially banks in eastern Europe owned by western European
banks including specifically Raiffeisen Zenetralbank Oesterreich and
Sweden’s Swedbank. The public Moody’s warning will now force western
banks with subsidiaries in eastern Europe to dramatically tighten
lending conditions in the east at just the time the opposite is needed
to keep economic growth from collapsing and thereby setting off
chair-reaction loan defaults. The western banks are caught in a devil’s
circle

Crunch hits
Germany - by Mirko Knoche, Spectrezine, February 17, 2009In December, German
chamber of commerce chief economist Volker Treier admitted quite
frankly: "Germany, as the world's leading export nation, will profit
from economic stimulus programmes across the globe." In other words, Germany might adopt a risky
wait-and-see policy to see the country through the crisis by taking
advantage of taxpayers' money abroad

"Trust me,
Queens sucks too" - Greg PalastHere, in the comic,
America's culture war and class war has moved to its inevitable bloody
conclusion: a corporate junta pretending to provide safety to
war-torn New York while using high-tech military intelligence and
scum-bag death squads to hold on to power

Judge Conflict Case Tests High Court
Veteran - Tony Mauro, Legal Times, February 18, 2009With 64 oral arguments
under his belt, Mayer Brown partner Andrew Frey has argued more cases
to the Supreme Court than any other lawyer currently in private
practice. Now he's preparing for what may be the biggest -- and most
unpopular -- argument of his career, representing a West Virginia coal company
accused, in effect, of buying a state Supreme Court justice through
campaign donations while its case was pending before that court

2
Pa. Judges Admit Jailing Kids For Cash - CBS News, 12 Feb 2009Two Pennsylvania judges
charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send youth
'offenders' to privately run detention centers pleaded guilty to fraud
Thursday in one of the most stunning cases of judicial corruption on
record. Prosecutors allege Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and
Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders
in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, possibly
tainting the convictions of thousands of juvenile 'offenders.'

Soroff Fund Added to Petrobras, Potash
Stakes in Fourth Quarter - By Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam and Saijel
Kishan, Bloomberg, Feb. 17, 2009Soros’s New York-based
firm oversees $21 billion. Its Quantum Endowment Fund returned 8
percent last year. That compared with an average loss of 18 percent by
hedge funds, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. of
Chicago...

Geithner
Pressed By G-7 to Move Faster on Bank Bailout - By Simon Kennedy
and Rebecca Christie, Bloomberg, Feb. 16, 2009“A concrete U.S. plan
would have positive spillover effects on markets and economies
elsewhere,” said Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit MIB in
London. “They are also probably hoping Geithner unveils the magic
formula, which they could then also adopt.”

Madoff Blames Ponzi Scheme on Youth,
Immaturity - Borowitz Report, February 17, 2009Was Only in His Sixties,
Financier Explains. Reflecting on his role in the fraud, which wound up
bilking $50 billion from unwitting investors, Mr. Madoff said, "I think
I felt under pressure to become the biggest scumbag of all time." In
other business news, GM and Chrysler revealed their rescue plans, which
call for the two auto giants to stop making cars and become banks
instead.

Gay
Talese Extends Editorial Services to Bums - by Roy Edroso, The
Village Voice, February 17, 2009Unsolicited, Talese
changed a nameless mendicant's punchy, "Homeless. Please Help," to the
more poetic, "Please Support Pres. Obama's Stimulus Plan, and begin
right here... at the bottom... Thank you." Talese does not report the
man's response...

Dead
End in Detroit for White-Collar Workers - By BILL VLASIC and NICK
BUNKLEY, NYTimes, February 16, 2009Unlike union workers laid
off from idled factories, salaried workers have no safety net of health
care or guaranteed income for a year. At best, it’s a small severance
or buyout, and a voucher for a discount on one of the hundreds of
thousands of unsold cars that G.M. or Chrysler has sitting in inventory

U.S. Accuses Texas Financial Firm of $8
Billion Fraud - By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, PHILLIP L. ZWEIG and
JULIE CRESWELL, NYTimes, February 17, 2009The Securities and
Exchange Commission accused Robert Allen Stanford, the chief of the Stanford Financial Group, on Tuesday
of conducting “a massive ongoing fraud” in the sale of about $8 billion
of high-yielding certificates of deposit held in the firm’s bank in
Antigua. Also named in the suit were two other executives and some
affiliates of the financial group

London Banking Center at Core of Financial
Crisis - Wasaka, February 16, 2009New York’s normally far
left Village Voice has published a revealing article, which for the
first time here placed the central blame for the current major economic
problems in the U.S. on the behavior of several London banks

Japan's
Downturn Is Bad News for the World (?) - By MICHAEL AUSLIN, WSJ,
FEBRUARY 17, 2009The U.S. can't count on
Japanese savers (taxpayers). Without massive debt purchases by Japan
and China, the U.S. may not be able to finance the cost of the stimulus
package indebting the taxpayers (but the U.S. can resort to
print sovereign 'US notes' to pay for the bill, like Japan is pondering
right now)

UK going mad with anti-bonus fever
- By Chris Hughes, breakingviews.com, 16 Feb 2009Why would anyone take a
senior job in a UK bank right now? Not for the money. The criticism of
bonuses is too intense for that (after all, if the people learn the
truth, they may face life sentences...)

A
fraud bigger than Madoff --Senior US soldiers investigated over missing
Iraq 'reconstruction' billions - Independent, 16 Feb 2009In what could turn out to
be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started
to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the
misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to 'reconstruct' Iraq
after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be
clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even
bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme. In one case,
auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet
upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for
south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed
standing with the mound of money

Inquiry
on Graft in Iraq Focuses on U.S. Officers - NYTimes, 15 Feb 2009Tens of thousands of
dollars stuffed into pizza boxes and delivered surreptitiously to the
American contracting offices in Baghdad, and payoffs made in paper
sacks that were scattered in "dead drops" around the Green Zone.
Federal authorities examining the early days of the $125 billion
American-led effort to 'rebuild' Iraq have significantly broadened
their inquiry to include senior American military officers [Army Col.
Anthony B. Bell and Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force] who
oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government
officials and court documents

Best Economic Stimulus - Suspend the Income
Tax Withholding! - Rich Sheridan, Feb 18, 2009A Call for A City of
Dallas Resolution to Washington to Suspend Income Tax Withholding
Presented to the Dallas City Council By Richard P. Sheridan,
Professional Engineer, New York - Activist. Last Thursday, The Dallas
Morning News did a great critical review of the Economic Stimulus
Package. Here's the best of what this editorial said: "A deep reduction
in the payrool tax workers and employers pay would have been a smarter
way to rev up consumer spending and job growth."

Well
here we are...the end of Planet Finance
- RICHARD GRAYSON, essay published in Broadsheet, Australia, 2009Sotheby's has just let
120 people go in the USA. In May they sold a Bacon painting for $86
million American to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, their most
recent sale failed to shift a similar one at under half the price.
Galleries are shutting their doors. It is, as a friend just back from
Art Basel Miami said, 'Like someone just turned a tap off.' Things are
falling back to earth

CATASTROPHIC BANKERS’ RAMP TO
CONTINUE UNDER OBAMA
SMALL PROBLEM: THE MARKET AND THE WORLD AREN’T BUYING IT -
Christopher Story, 15 February 2009The reason that the
banks’ derivatives assets haven’t been valued and cannot be valued is
that THEY HAVE NO VALUE. They are figments of financial marketing
sorcerers' imaginations. The very word 'derivative' itself contains the
brazen lie that the subsequent 'Structured Products' are DERIVED from
the original transaction, whereas in reality the cashflow from the
original deal does not 'travel', and the subsequent parties have NO
RECOURSE to the hard cashflow from the original transaction, so that
they are handling phantom trades divorced from the original contract. The age of smoke and mirrors is
over.

Central
banks urged to buy corporate debt - By Tony Barber in Brussels,
FT.com, February 16 2009However, only the UK has
yet embraced Mr Seillière’s suggestion that national governments or
central banks should take the radical step of buying up the debt of
­private-sector companies outside the financial sector. The Bank of
England’s asset purchase facility commenced last week. “Further
exceptional measures should be considered ... For example, central
banks and governments could explore options for temporary schemes to
buy commercial paper and other debt instruments directly from
companies.”

Roubini
tells Geithner to nationalise US banks - By James Quinn, Telegraph,
16 Feb 2009Tim Geithner must
nationalise some of America's biggest banks and take the total toll of
the US bail-out to around $2 trillion, according to one of the world's
most prominent economists

An
Edifice of Pure Economic Crapola
- By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/16/09“On the other hand, we
call for trillion dollar stimulus plan on the basis of little more than
citing John Maynard Keynes” which “gives us special license to talk
economics without knowing any.” Hahaha! Exactly right! Well put! And
like the guy who wears a T-shirt that proudly proclaims “I am not a
gynecologist, but I’ll take a look” the results of having economic
poseurs and idiots at the Federal Reserve inflict their idiotic
econometric theories upon us have been Disastrously, Ruinously Bad

WHY
SOME SUSTAINABLE POWER IS UNSUSTAINABLE - By Colin Barras, New
Scientist, February 6, 2009Some forms of renewable
energy are dependent upon scarce metals like indium and platinum or on
farmland, which is needed for food

INVASION
USA: ¡Adios! Personal banker quits
over Mexican IDs - By Chelsea Schilling, WorldNetDaily,
February 15, 2009Employee acts to take
America back, refuses to help illegals. A personal banker in Arlington,
Va., is quitting his job after Chevy Chase Bank, one of the largest and
best-known banks in the Washington, D.C., region announced it will
begin accepting consular cards from customers who many suspect are
illegal aliens

Wikileaks
slams arrest; releases latest Afghan
civilian deaths data - February 16, 2009A confidential NATO
report issued last month reveals that civilian deaths from the war in
Afghanistan have increased by 46% over the past year. What
McNally passed on will not cost lives in the sense that it doesn't give
specific military details. But the whole point of defeating the Taliban
is winning hearts and minds and stopping the population joining their
cause. If they learn we're
lying to them, it could become a very dangerous place. This has
caused a diplomatic row and the Americans are not happy at all...

The Grace Commission
confirms the allegation that the income tax revenues go 100% to pay the
interest on the national debt and not a single nickel of it goes to the
government. Whatever government services we have, they are not
being financed by the income tax. The underlined section of this report
is from the Grace Commission that proves that none of the personal
income tax goes to pay for any government services and is used to pay
only the interest on the national debt. Click here to go to the bookmark now

Obama targets housing fix after
stimulus victory - by Jitendra Joshi; YNews, Feb 15, 2009Senator Lindsey Graham
cited estimates that half a trillion dollars could be needed to fix the
property sector, whose tailspin from boom to bust has crippled much of
Wall Street and ignited the broader economic crisis. After the first
round of a banking bailout and now the stimulus bill, "it makes it
harder for everybody here to go back to the public and say, 'Please
give us more money, because we seem irresponsible'," he said on ABC News

Dinar Standard: Monthly Newsletter
- Business Strategies for OIC Markets - Feb 2009: Safar 1430This year - new
opportunities emerge in manufacturing, food, and agriculture. The 2008
DS100 continues to provide the leading benchmark of the health of OIC
(Organization of the Islamic Conference) economies. With US $1.21
trillion in total revenues and a respectable 12.3% in revenue growth
over the year before, the Top 100 Companies of the OIC show resilience
amidst the global economic turmoil

IMF
chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn warns second
wave of countries will require bail-out - Edmund Conway,
Telegraph, 14 Feb 2009A "second wave" of
countries will fall victim to the economic crisis and face being bailed
out by the International Monetary Fund, its chief warned at the G7
summit in Rome. The whole problem is that purchasing power must now be
enticed from international investors -- the ones to whom everyone is in
debt to and losing their foreclosed properties to etc. -- by more
claims on their labor and property. All of our "bail" goes to the
usurer Baal -- who does not recirculate it to us. Rather we must have goverment created
purchasing power go right to American households from the
constitutional power to regulate money and interstate trade.
Social Credit could have prevented this depression and Social Credit
could end it right now -- but instead we go further into debt and
increase our tax burden and hand over more of our public assets and
private holdings to the creditor class who take the money and invest it
in other countries because they are profiting from our failure. The
super rich are gaining all of the assets Americans are losing. Their
wealth as creditors increases exactly as we are further crushed by
debt. All of our debt is backed by the collateral we put up when we
took out our loans -- and yet the Money Power -- the credit monopoly --
are the ones getting the bailout. Where are all of the unemployed --
this is no time for looking for jobs that aren't there. It is time for
demanding the new president end the private credit monopoly and
domination of our key institutions by agents of the International
Bankers. Stop acting exactly as they must have predicted you would act
when they conceived this plot against us

Highlights of The Stimulus Bill
- Catherine Austin Fitts, February 13,
2009The Associated Press
breakdown of approximately $700 billion of the $789 billion economic
stimulus bill agreed to by the Senate and House

The Data Beast - Part V -
Catherine Austin Fitts, February 12, 200Before his death, Aaron
Russo gave an interview about his conversations with a member of the
Rockefeller family regarding plans to further centralize control of the
human race...

Fraud
probe into UK firm's role in collapse of world's largest insurer AIG
- By Arthur Martin and Ben Laurance, Daily Mail, 12th February 2009The probe by the Serious
Fraud Office into AIG Financial Products will focus on those with
‘inside knowledge’ of the collapse
Part of the inquiry into the Mayfair-based subsidiary is likely to
focus on its boss, Joseph Cassano (above)

THE
FEDERAL LAND LORDING AGENDA - By Nancy Levant, NewsWithViews.com,
February 14, 2009In 1992, the United
Nations stated in its blueprint for the 21st century (Agenda 21) that
there is to be no privately-held property — be it land or the homes
that sit upon the land — for anyone. All property, according to Agenda
21, is to be “owned” by government. Agenda 21 also details the plan for
“human relocation” stating that all member nations must implement
“human relocation” plans. So today, we witness flood, fire, snow and
ice, and power-grid relocations — annually — and with Homeland military
assistance/insistence. We, as the people of this nation, are indeed
“relocating.”

A March on
Washington? - by Jon Christian Ryter, NewsWithViews.com, February
14, 2009Maybe it's time to remind
the politicians on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC,
that they still work for us and not the bankers, industrialists and
merchant princes they are endowing with taxpayer money that belongs to
us, our children, our grandchildren and their children. Politicians
think the taxpayer-voter-citizens are so dumb that we forget the money
they throw around like it was worthless paper actually belongs to us,
"the People."

Ruin
Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan - Commentary by Betsy
McCaughey, Bloomberg, Feb. 9, 2009The health-care industry
is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of
the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care
the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth
industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or
auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your
health and the economy

Pinnacle Bank, Beaverton, Oregon
- By Tony, The Bank Implode-O-Meter, February 13th, 2009Pinnacle Bank, Beaverton,
Oregon hit bed rock bottom as the FDIC made it unlucky number 13, on
the day before Valentines day 2009

If Eastern Europe falls, world is
next - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, February 14, 2009The European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) says bad debts will top 10
percent and may reach 20 percent. The Vienna press said Bank Austria and its Italian owner
Unicredit face a "monetary Stalingrad" in the East

Obscene Wealth Can Be a Deadly Sin
- By Howard Bess, Consortiumnews,
February 14, 2009It is time for Christians
to speak to America about our real besetting sin. Our obsessive
immorality is not sexual behavior as some would have us believe. Rather
it is our obsession with wealth. We as a nation have become obscenely
greedyThe
Oligarchy's Bailout Ball - By Michael Winship, Consortiumnews,
February 14, 2009"Like spoiled, petulant
children," is how Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein described
them. "These guys won't be happy until the government agrees to relieve
them of every last one of their lousy loans and investments at inflated
prices, recapitalize every major bank and brokerage and insurance
company on sweetheart terms and restore them to the glory days, so they
can once again earn inflated profits and obscene pay packages by
screwing over their customers and their shareholders."

Federal
obligations exceed world GDP - By Jerome R. Corsi, WorldNetDaily
February 13, 2009Does $65.5 trillion
terrify anyone yet? "The federal government is bankrupt," Williams told
WND. "In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a
corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury
officers would be in federal penitentiary."

G7
ministers put up united front as they try to avoid a retreat into protectionism -
Gary Duncan, The Times, February 14, 2009Officials in Rome
struggled to conceal their shock at much worse than expected official
figures revealing that the eurozone economy shrank at a record rate in
the final quarter of last year. The countries were led by Germany,
where GDP went into free-fall, plunging by a startling 2.1 per cent –
the worst quarterly decline since 1970

Britain’s bankers plumb new depths
- Patrick Hosking, The Times, February 14, 2009The suggestion by Lord
Myners, the City minister, that some bankers simply have no sense
of the broader society around them is getting harder to refute.
To be preparing to pay out billions of pounds in discretionary bonuses
over the next few weeks suggests an ignorance of the public mood and a single-mindedness bordering on
sociopathic

US
intelligence chief: World
capitalist crisis poses greatest threat- By Bill Van
Auken, WSWS, 14 Feb 2009In testimony before the
Senate Committee on Intelligence Thursday, Washington's new director of
national intelligence, Dennis Blair, warned that the deepening world capitalist
crisis posed the paramount threat to US national security and
warned that its continuation could trigger a return to the "violent
extremism" of the 1920s and 1930s

Financial Crisis Called Top Security Threat
to U.S. - Washington Post, 13 Feb 2009Director of National
Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress yesterday that instability
in countries around the world caused by the current global economic
crisis [the Bush Depression], rather than terrorism, is the primary
near-term security threat to the United States. Blair also raised the
specter of the "high levels of violent extremism" in the turmoil of the
1920s and 1930s along with "regime-threatening instability" [Hope
springs eternal!] if the economic crisis persists over a
one-to-two-year period

Regulators Close Banks in Nebraska,
Florida - By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 13 Feb 2009Regulators on Friday
closed Sherman
County Bank in Nebraska and Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast in Florida, marking 11 failures
this year of federally insured
institutions

US: Pennsylvania Joins
Sovereignty Fight - February 13th, 2009In an attempt to proclaim
and reassert Pennsylvania state government’s independence and
sovereignty from the federal government, I plan to introduce a House
resolution reminding federal authorities about the constitutional
limitations on their powers and calling on them to cease and desist
with all activities that infringe on the powers reserved to the state
of Pennsylvania and its citizens

Ireland to take control of banks,
while plans for Fortis are rebuffed - By Matthew Saltmarsh and
Eamon Quinn, IHT, February 11, 2009The Irish government,
meeting Wednesday night, approved a capital injection of €3.5 billion,
or $4.5 billion, each for Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, a
Finance Ministry official said. Bloomberg News reported later Wednesday
night that the ministry confirmed the move in an e-mail message. That
made Ireland the first European Union country to take de facto control
of all of its most important banks. Last month, the government stepped
in to nationalize the teetering Anglo Irish Bank, which was No.3

California: Counties brace for
missed payments from state - John Wildermuth, SFGate, February 10,
2009"The controller shares
the counties' frustration," said Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for
Chiang. "But he has to defer payment on everything to make sure there's
money for mandated expenses
like debt service..."

'Buy
gold. It'll only rise from here' - Vivek Kaul, DNA, February
13, 2009Can you visualise a
catalysing event that will lead to the outright capitulation of the US
dollar?It's impossible to
predict. It could be another major bank failure in the US. It could be
when the Federal Reserve becomes the biggest buyer of US T-bonds. It
could be when China or other trade surplus countries stop accumulating
dollars and start spending them instead. The event causing the tipping
point cannot be predicted, but once the tipping point is reached,
history shows that the currency has less than a year before it totally
collapses

DIVIDED:
AMERICA FALLS - By Frosty Wooldridge, NewsWithViews.com, February
13, 2009Our present economic
crisis has been the result of many mistakes, not the least of which is blind trust in the belief
that persons in leadership positions always had our best interests at
heart, lending agencies and federal officials were persons of
unquestioned honor, and that our personal and national safety was never
in peril

American
black ops in Japan are
starting to be exposed - Benjamin Fulford, 02/14/2009In what appears to be a
related development, the killer of Japanese Democratic Party MP Kouki
Ishii has now confessed, in a documentary released by TV Asahi, that he
lied when he confessed by saying he acted alone when in fact he acted
on behalf of others. Ishii was killed 4 years ago shortly before he was
due to bring evidence to the Japanese parliament that would “turn
Japanese politics upside down.” My sources told me he found out a large
portion of Japan’s secret budget was being used to steal Japanese money
to give the US military industrial gangster machine

Buy
American: Protection From Yourself
- By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/13/09This is not about how we
have been led down the path of destruction by the corrupt news media
and the lapdog universities not doing their jobs, failing miserably,
just as miserably as the Federal Reserve and the worthless trash in
Congress have failed us, but about protectionism, which may be
ostensibly about “saving jobs”, but it is actually about retaliation
and massive tit-for-tat protectionist legislation, which makes
everything that anyone buys cost more and more, making everything worse
and worse, inflations spiraling until you are bankrupt and starving...

Europe's industrial base may never recover
from crisis - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 13 Feb 2009The European Commission
has issued a red alert over the unprecedented collapse of industrial
production, warning that EU states are running out of money for rescue
packages (To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is
no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads because
there are no kilometres...)

City trader Terry Freeman arrested
over £40 million 'Ponzi' fraud - Sean O'Neill, Crime Editor,
Michael Herman and Steve Bird , The Times. February 13, 2009Detective Chief
Superintendent Steve Head, of City of London police, said that his
force had detected a marked rise in financial crime as the recession
deepened. Mr Head said: "There is no doubt in my mind that the present
economic situation has led to this rise in reporting [of fraud]

All of Them Must Go - By Naomi
Klein, The Nation, February 4, 2009Watching the crowds in
Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me
of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: “You are Enron.
We are Argentina.” The pattern is clear: governments that respond to a
crisis created by free-market ideology with an acceleration of that
same discredited agenda will not survive to tell the tale. As
Italy's students have taken to shouting in the streets: "We won't pay
for your crisis!"

Nationalize the Banks - By
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, February 11, 2009The banks got us into
this financial mess in the first place by making unwise home loans and
by speculating in unregulated credit-default swaps tied to those loans.
They have taken the entire world economy down with them. They don’t
deserve to be bailed out. If we want companies to receive loans, why
not get rid of the middleman, and have the government lend directly to
businesses and to homeowners?

The
Economic Panic of 2009 - By Bill Bonner, Daily Reckoning, 02/12/09Poor Barack. His whole
presidency rests on getting this bailout thing right. If he does, he’ll
be a hero. If he doesn’t, the economy will go into a Japan-like slump
and he’ll spend his entire time in office dealing with people looking
for handouts – zombie banks, comatose corporations, and desperate
households. The poor bankers are playing along, of course. They’re
apologizing to politicians for all the harm they’ve done. ‘Yes, we
wrecked Western civilization, but we’ve said were sorry, all right?
Now, can we have the money?’

SOS: Suffocating On Spending -
By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/12/09Bloomberg.com report that
“The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the
government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7
trillion.” Now, I think you will agree that that is a lot of money, and
Bloomberg notes that “the
$9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to
every man, woman and child alive in the world,” and is “enough to pay
off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.” All I
can do is hole up in the Big Beautiful Mogambo Bunker (BBMB) and
whimper in fear, tapping out “SOS” on my Mogambo Interstellar Emergency
Transmitter (MIET) so that intelligent beings passing through this
quadrant of the galaxy will come and please, please, please rescue me
from this godforsaken planet of morons, governed as it is by the worst
of the worst

RT Guest: Gerald
Celente - Russia Today, February 11, 2009In 2009 we’re going to
see the worst economic collapse ever, the ‘Greatest Depression’, says
Gerald Celente, U.S. trend forecaster. He believes it’s going to be
very violent in the U.S., including there being a tax revolt. G.C.: I’m
not exaggerating, the facts are there. I have a saying: when people
lose everything and they have nothing to lose, they lose it. You’re
going to see people saying, off with their heads. There’s going to be
another revolution in this country

Obama,
like Bush, is Throwing Public Money into a Banking Black Hole - by Prof.
Rodrigue Tremblay, Global Research, February 12, 2009There exists a state of
denial in Washington D.C. regarding the excessive debt problem,
essentially because the same people who are responsible for creating
the mess are in power. It doesn't matter whether a Republican or a
Democratic administration is in place, they remain in charge and they
rely on the same failed economic policies. The Geithner plan is the son
of the Paulson plan. Both are destined to fail because they are based
on a flawed diagnosis

THE HOUSE OF CARDS - CNBC
presents the definitive report on the defining story of our time. CNBC
correspondent David Faber investigates
the origins of the global economic crisis, with first person accounts
from home buyers, mortgage brokers, investment bankers and investors –
most of whom let greed blind them, leading to the greatest financial
collapse since the Great Depression. "Let's hope we are all wealthy and
retired by the time this house of cards falters..." - internal
email, Wall Street, 12/15/2006

Financial
Crisis: A Short History of US
Government Handouts - by Stephen Lendman, Global Research,
February 12, 2009In America today, they're
called bailouts, but throughout history they were handouts. Some quite
generous (though nothing like today's) and always for the privileged.
Never for the public interest or greater good

Bubble
Economy 2.0: The Financial Recovery Plan from Hell - by Michael
Hudson, Global Research, February 11, 2009The myth of “free
markets” is now supposed to consist of governments withdrawing from
planning and taxing wealth, so as to leave resource allocation and the
economic surplus to bankers rather than elected public representatives.
This is what classically is called oligarchy, not democracy

Banks' toxic debts risk overwhelming EU
governments - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Bruno Waterfield, The
Telegraph, February 11, 2009While no country was
mentioned, the obvious candidates are Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, and Britain -- and non-EU member
Switizerland -- which all have oversized banking sectors. EU banks hold
balance sheet assets of E41.2 trillion (L36.9 trillion). European
Central Bank is not allowed to bail out individual states, yet national
goverments do not control the monetary levers. Who is in charge then?

China to Stick with U.S. Bonds
- By Henny Sender, Financial Times, February 11, 2009
A Chinese government banking official was quoted by the Financial Times
today, in the story appended here, as saying that his country has no
alternative to continuing its purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds even as
China knows that those bonds are worth nothing

[tutti contro tutti] Feds Set Sights on 'Gatekeepers' in
Fraud Investigations - Joe Palazzolo, Legal Times, February 12, 2009Federal law enforcement
officials said Wednesday they are targeting lawyers, mortgage brokers and other "gatekeepers" who perpetrated
fraud that contributed to the current economic crisis -- a clear
warning shot as the federal government pumps billions of dollars into
the financial sector. "They have the
most to lose, they're the most likely to flip, and they make the
best examples," said Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for
the Troubled Assets Relief Program, during a congressional hearing

Halliburton
and KBR to Pay $579 Million in Penalties in Nigerian Bribe Case -
Marcia Coyle, The National Law Journal, February 12, 2009The Department of Justice
and the SEC have won the second-largest penalties -- totaling $579
million -- for violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against
an American company involved in a 10-year scheme to bribe Nigerian
government officials to obtain engineering and construction contracts.
Kellogg Brown & Root agreed to pay a $402 million criminal fine.
KBR's parent company, KBR Inc., and its former parent company,
Halliburton, jointly agreed to pay $177 million in disgorgement of
profits

Official: Wife Pulled $15 Million Before Madoff Arrest
- Glen Johnson, The Associated Press, February 12, 2009The wife of disgraced
money manager Bernard Madoff withdrew more than $15 million from a firm
co-owned by her husband -- including $10 million on the day before his
arrest on charges he ran a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, the top securities
regulator in Massachusetts said Wednesday. "We're not accusing her of
anything wrong," a spokesman for Secretary of State William Galvin
said. "Now, what someone in New York or the feds may think of it, may
be entirely different."

King
Says U.K. in Deep Recession, Pledges More
Easing - By Svenja O’Donnell and Brian Swint, Bloomberg,
Feb. 11, 2009“We now expect the Monetary Policy Committee to
cut rates to zero at the March meeting and introduce
quantitative easing,” said Michael Saunders, chief Western European
economist at Citigroup Inc. in London. That will probably include
“purchases of a range of assets, including gilts but also private
sector assets.” Fathom Financial Consulting, a firm founded by a group
of former central bank economists, yesterday urged the government to buy houses
as a means to increase the money supply

$3000-a-day jobs for Bush friends
- 10 Feb 2009Former US president
George W. Bush has appointed dozens of "friends and supporters" to
lucrative jobs during his final days in office. The Washington Post
wrote on Tuesday that Bush made more than 100 such appointments,
tapping associates to non-confirmable, obscure posts such as the
President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and the US-Russia
Polar Bear Commissions. Former White House senior aides, Fred F.
Fielding, Emmet T. Flood, William A. Burck and Daniel M. Price were all
assigned to an obscure World Bank agency called the International
Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes...

White House may move to buy mortgages - By John W.
Schoen, msnbc, Feb. 12, 2009The White House is
considering a new approach to head off foreclosures in which the
government would buy up loans at risk of default and refinance them

WHO
IS PULLING GEITNER'S STRINGS?
- By Cliff Kincaid, NewsWithViews.com, February 12, 2009Geithner doesn’t know the
details because he hasn’t been given them yet. Those who expected the
details of the plan were operating under the false assumption that the
Treasury Secretary -- and by extension, the U.S. Government -- is in
practical control and charge of the U.S. economy

Fraud
'Directly Related' to Financial Crisis Probed --FBI Agents Could be
Reassigned from National Security Due to Booming Caseload - By
JASON RYAN, ABCnews, 11 Feb 2009The FBI has opened
investigations into more than 500 cases of alleged corporate fraud,
including 38 that involve major firms and are "directly related" to the
national economic crisis, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told
Congress today. The surge in white-collar investigations is putting
such a strain on the FBI that Pistole said the bureau is considering
reassigning agents from national security, which has been the bureau's
priority since the 9/11 attacks.

Will You Help Me With My Next Film?
- Michael Moore, February 11 2009"... if you work for a
bank, a brokerage firm or an insurance company — or if you have seen
things or heard things that you believe the American people have a
right to know — please contact me at bailout@michaelmoore.com." –
Michael Moore

Bankers
face 'great deal of anger'
- msnbc, 11 Feb 2009The gaping divide between
the nation's political and financial capitals showed starkly Wednesday
when lawmakers hammered eight of Wall Street's most influential chief
executives about how they have so far spent billions of taxpayer money.
Angry Congressmen wanted to know why their constituents cannot get
loans for cars, homes and businesses even though the banks received
$160 billion so far to help thaw frozen credit

[global default] Regulator
Calls for Lenders to Stop Foreclosures - By Renae Merle,
Washington Post, February 11th, 2009The Office of Thrift
Supervision today called for the mortgage lenders it regulates to halt
foreclosures until the Obama administration unveils a program to help
struggling homeowners

Silver
and Gold Will Make You More Attractive - by The Mogambo Guru, Daily
Reckoning, 02/11/09“Investment demand for
silver leapt a huge 309 tonnes last week, a tonnage we have never seen
before in such a short time!” I sighed and began to daydream when I
suddenly realized the cosmic universality that demand and supply
applied even to pretty girls! We testosterone-besotted males of the
species ensure a constant high demand for them, yet with a low supply
of the little cuties, the price is high! Hahaha!

Banks to Assure Congress About Use
of Public Funds - By Amit R. Paley and Howard Schneider, Washington
Post, February 11th, 2009Wall Street Executives
Say They're Looking to Improve Risk Management.
"To the captains of the universe sitting here before all of us,"
California Rep. Maxine Waters (D) began, "all of my political life I
have been in disagreement with the banking industry." Rep. Paul
Kanjorski (D-Penn.) drily noted that some of the bankers have said they
didn't want to take the bailout money but were forced to by former
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. "If you got money you didn't want,"
Kanjorksi told the execs, "Please find a way to return that money to
the Treasury before you leave town." Wall
Street 'Swindle' Gets Moore to Ask
Bankers to Spill Beans - By Pat Wechsler, Bloomberg,
February 11th, 2009Moore’s project,
announced at the Cannes Film Festival last May, is being co-financed by
Overture and Paramount Vantage, a unit of Viacom Inc.’s Paramount
Pictures Corp., that’s handling distribution outside the North America,
according to the Overture spokesman

Congressman
Gives Speech in Front of Pelosi’s Office: ‘There Are More Shady Deals Going on Behind Closed Doors’
- Jeff Poor, Business & Media Institute, Feb 12, 2009President Barack Obama
has proclaimed his administration will be more open than the previous
administration. However, his counterparts in the House and the Senate
aren’t following suit. The Georgia congressman had also called on
congressional leaders to televise the House-Senate negotiations.
However, as much as the press has helped the Obama administration
trumpet a new era of transparency, there has been little call from the
television media for these negotiations to be televised publicly...

How Popular Anger Grew, 1929 and 2009
- Middle East Online, 2009-02-11One might have
anticipated an even more robust response today, given the damage done
not only to our domestic economy, but to the global one upon which any
American economic recovery will rely to a very considerable degree,
says Steve Fraser

Gordon
Brown is 'drowning in bankers'
- By Andrew Gimson, Telegraph, 11 Feb 2009Towards the end of Prime
Minister's questions, Angela Watkinson (C, Upminster) rose and asked
about another banker, Glen Moreno, described by her as a former trustee
of a bank specialising in tax evasion, who has now been appointed by
the Government to look after the 37 billion pounds of taxpayers' money
invested in bailed out banks. Mr Brown rose and retorted: "Mr Speaker,
he is acting chairman." What a quibble: was this pedantic evasion the
best the Prime Minister could offer in Mr Moreno's defence? (EU
governments would be gone by September...do you want to bet?)

The
Western secret government is still
planning genocide - Benjamin Fulford, 02/11/2009They have been using the
futures markets to depress the price of foodstuffs while simultaneously
jacking up the price of fertilizer. This puts farmers between the rock
of low grain prices and the hard place of high fertilizer prices. The
result is many developing country farmers are being forced to reduce
their harvests.Whenever the world’s
charities start making a fuss about starvation, the Western governments
make great promises of aid but never actually disburse the money. Of
the $14 billion pledged to help starving people in 2008, only $1
billion was actually spent

The
discussions on a new financial system have failed - Benjamin
Fulford, 02/10/2009U.S.
SENATE MOVES TOWARD `PECORA' INVESTIGATION - by Helga
Zepp-LaRouche, Executive Intelligence Review, February 13, 2009The American Congress and
Senate have begun serious investigations into the deeper causes of the
financial crisis. Republican Sen. Richard Shelby from Alabama, speaking
to the Banking Committee, demanded that "Pecora hearings" be held, for
launching a comprehensive investigation into the underlying causes of
the crisis. But the financial oligarchy is not asleep either: It is
waging an international media campaign to create a hostile environment
against all ideas and political personalities that support a new
financial system oriented towards the common good

Sir
James Crosby resigns from FSA - Graeme Wearden, Simon Bowers and
Deborah Summers, guardian.co.uk, 11 February 2009Sir James Crosby has
dramatically quit as deputy chairman of the Financial Services
Authority following
revelations that he fired a whistleblower who warned of dangerous
lending practices at HBOS. Brown defends decision to appoint
former HBOS chief. Cameron accuses PM of 'serious error of judgment'

Don’t Pay Your Debt: A Page from the
Fed’s Playbook - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/10/09 Sure enough, I was right,
as she goes on, “To qualify
for aid, the homeowner must be at least 60 days past due on his or her
mortgage payments”! This is fabulous! I can do this! I can stop
paying! I’m good at it, in fact! And now I can stop paying, but instead
of the sheriff coming over here one day after the expiration of the
Termination Notice and dragging the pitiful pile of crap that I call
“clothing and furniture” to the curb, now the government gives me
money! Whee! “Initially, delayed-foreclosure preference was given to
mortgagees who lived in their houses. It now has been extended to having
an occupant in the house.” Hahaha! Now I can stop paying the mortgage on
my rental property, too! It just keeps getting better and
better! Hahaha!

Bernanke
Begins ‘Thorough Review’ of Fed Disclosure - By Craig Torres,
Bloomberg, Feb. 10, 2009Bernanke has invoked
emergency authority and more than doubled the size of the Fed’s balance
sheet to $1.8 trillion to combat the worst credit crisis in seven
decades. His moves have prompted concern that the central bank is
encouraging excessive risk-taking, distorting pricing in financial
markets and jeopardizing the Fed’s independence. The Fed hasn’t
disclosed many of the assets and participants in its programsBernanke Begins ‘Thorough Review’ of Fed
Disclosure (AUDIO) - Ben S. Bernanke, Cong. Hearings, 2/10/09

[naked banker] Mutant
Seeds for Mesopotamia - By Andrew Bosworth, Uruknet.de, October 15,
2008Most people have never
heard of the infamous "100 Orders," but they help explain why the
majority of Iraqis remain opposed to foreign occupation. The 100 Orders
allow multinational corporations to basically privatize an entire
nation, and this degree of foreign and private control has not been
witnessed since the days of the British East India Company and its
extraterritoriality treaties...

Law Firms' 2011 Scenario and the End
of Leverage - Paul Lippe, The American Lawyer, February 11, 2009You will have noticed
that the 2011 scenario locks in a 20 percent drop in firm revenues. So
firms will have to find ways to cut at least 40 percent of overhead to
maintain profits. In another London meeting, a very able head of
knowledge management for a Magic Circle firm quoted the Nobel
Prize-winning physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford. "Gentlemen, we have run
out of money. It is time to start thinking." Pretty good advice

Commissioner Chilton seeks criminal
authority for CFTC - By Tina Seeley, Bloomberg News,
February 10, 2009The U.S. Commodity
Futures Trading Commission should have the authority to pursue criminal
violations of rules in the markets it oversees, Commissioner Bart
Chilton said

Gordon
Brown calls for World Bank and IMF reform - By Angela Monaghan,
Telegraph, 09 Feb 2009The Prime Minister said
the world required an authoritative early-warning system to spot future
problems. "We've never given anybody sufficient teeth that their views
are treated seriously, that people have to act when those warnings are
given," he said

Students
are revolting: The spirit of '68 is reawakening - Emily Dugan,
Independent, 8 February 2009Campus sit-ins began as a
response to the Gaza attacks, but unrest is already spilling over to
other issues. Beginning with a 24-hour occupation at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 13 January, the sit-ins spread
across the country. Now occupations have been held at the LSE, Essex,
King's College London, Birmingham, Sussex, Warwick, Manchester
Metropolitan, Oxford, Leeds, Cambridge, Sheffield Hallam, Bradford,
Nottingham, Queen Mary, Manchester, Strathclyde, Newcastle, Kingston,
Goldsmiths and Glasgow

Knut
Hamsun commemorated on Norwegian coin - Alison Flood,
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 February 2009Knut Hamsun, the Nobel
prize-winning Norwegian author who fell from grace for supporting the
Nazi occupation of Norway, is to be put on a commemorative coin by his
homeland's central bank

[verso la vendetta popolare] Blacklist of Predator
Bankers released on NACA website - February 10, 2009ACCOUNTABILITY CAMPAIGN:
Executives of financial institutions have amassed huge fortunes on the
backs of hardworking American families. While living in their many
luxurious homes, they have refused to restructure mortgages that would
allow families to stay in their homes. We need to make them accountable
for their actions. Join the fight. While NACA has agreements with many
lenders to make your mortgage affordable, the below executives refused.
Click on the lender/servicer to see how they live and how to contact
them directly

Ship Of Fools - By
Paul Craig Roberts, rense.com, 2-9-9In the Great Depression
good debts were destroyed by monetary contraction. Today bad debts are
being preserved by the expansion of money and credit, and the US
Treasury is jeopardizing its credit standing and the dollar's reserve
currency status with enormous quarterly bond auctions as far as the eye
can see. According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis,
the cost to the US taxpayers of sending a single soldier to fight in
Afghanistan or Iraq is $775,000 per year! How would you like to be sent
to a war, the point of which no one knows, including the
commander-in-chief who sent you to kill or be killed? How, fellow
taxpayers, do you like paying the enormous cost of sending soldiers on
an undefined mission while the economy collapses?

Laid off? Go home, says Czech
republic - Reuters, February 9, 2009The Czech Republic will
offer a free plane ticket and €500 ($795) to foreign workers who
voluntarily agree to return home after losing their jobs in the
economic downturn, the government said on Monday

Old News
for Gold Bugs - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/09/09It is already beginning,
as “Last year investors experienced shortages of the smaller wafers and
coins, with premiums running as high as 10-40 percent for gold and
30-100 percent for silver”, which may have been what led Citibank to
predict that gold could soar to “$2,000 an ounce sometime in 2009.”

President
And Congress Grovel Before The Fed - by Pastor Chuck Baldwin,
NewsWithViews.com, February 10, 2009Ever since the Fed was
created in 1913, America has been subjected to recession after
recession, not to mention one Great Depression. Some are even
predicting that the United States is now actually entering a second
Great Depression. Please understand this: the Federal Reserve has
manipulated every bit of this financial crisis for the express purpose
of enriching the international bankers on the backs (and bankruptcies)
of the American taxpayers. The Fed (which is not even a government
agency, but rather a private corporation consisting of mostly foreign
bankers) dictates America's financial and fiscal policies. And what
does our illustrious Congress do? They continue to give billions and
even trillions of taxpayer dollars to the very same group of gangsters
who created and perpetuate this financial fraud. And, as with Congress,
Presidents from both major parties likewise promote and defend this
chicanery (e in Europa è esattamente la stessa cosa)

Rob
Kirby: Crime scene
investigation - Gata.org, February 9, 2009Market analyst and GATA
consultant Rob Kirby of Kirby Analytics in Toronto enumerates the
market-rigging purposes of the President's Working Group on Financial
Markets, reviews the failure of the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission to investigate the Madoff Securities fraud, and wonders when
the overwhelming evidence presented by GATA about the rigging of the
gold market will be acknowledged by government regulators and the
mainstream financial media

'Paper gold market will crash at Comex'
-CommodityOnline, February 9, 2009Interviewed by
CommodityOnline, gold fund manager Marc Gugerli remarks that the New
York Commodities Exchange's paper gold market is dominated by a few
traders connected to the U.S. government and that he expects that
market to default soon

THE ROCKEFELLER PLAN, PART 5 -
By Dennis L. Cuddy, NewsWithViews.com, February 9, 2009In David Rockefeller’s
Memoirs (2002) he revealed on page 405 that he’s part of a “secret
cabal working against the best interests of the United States,…
conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated
global political and economic structure – one world, if you will.”

A Tax Revolt Hits The United States
In 2009? - John Paul Mitchell, Freedom Arizona, February 9, 2009Queen Boadicea from East
Anglia started a revolution attributed to the corrupt tax collectors in
the British Isles. In 60 ADE, the revolt she led killed all Roman
soldiers within a 100 mile radius. Her No More Taxes revolutionary
resistance movement was able to seize London. It is reported 80,000
Roman soldiers were massacred during her revolt. Those 80,000 soldiers
faced an unexpected army of 230,000 armed tax resisters. Maybe it is
time for people everywhere to stand up against their governments and
revolt

Home
Price Bottom Predicted by Year End - The Truth About Mortgage, 09
Feb 09The report notes that 62
percent of the nation’s 381 metro areas will see double-digit declines
by the time the market correction is complete. Declines will exceed 20
percent in about 100 of those areas, with the hardest hit regions of
Southeast Florida, California’s Central Valley, and Riverside, CA
expected to decline by upwards of 50 percent

Anger
as credit card firms slash spending
limits without warning - Helen Pridham, Margaret Dibben, The
Observer, Sunday 8 February 2009Whether it's because
you're too old, because you've lost your job or simply because you just
don't use it enough - your flexible friend may suddenly no longer be
quite as obliging as it once was

N.Y.
Attorney Convicted of Mortgage Fraud - Mark Hamblett, New York Law
Journal, February 9, 2009Alexander M. Kaplan, 34,
of Lerner & Kaplan, sat stoically at the defense table while a jury
of 10 women and two men pronounced him guilty on all 18 counts in an
indictment charging him with conspiracy and bank, mail and wire fraud

[Antitrust Amnesy] DOJ
Releases Antitrust Amnesty Agreements - Sue Reisinger, Corporate
Counsel, February 9, 2009Making the deals public
won't help reporters or gossipmongers, since all the juicy details have
been edited out -- even the name of the company that's a party to the
agreement. But it could help other corporations that want to negotiate an amnesy agreement with the Justice
Department to avoid prosecution for violating federal antitrust law
(monopoly is safe!)

Ousted HBOS directors may have left with
bounty of £4.5m - Jill Treanor, guardian.co.uk, 8 February
2009Former HBOS chief
executive Andy Hornby waived his right to almost £1m in annual pay when
he was asked to quit, but received hundreds of thousands of pounds in
cash payouts from share based incentive schemes. He is now earning
£60,000 a month as a consultant to his former bank. The cost of footing
the bill for clearing out the HBOS boardroom is likely to be shared by
the taxpayer which technically owned more than 70% of the bank

Workers
rebel in East Europe - by Heather Cottin, Global Research, February
8, 2009Thousands of
demonstrators in Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria have attacked
government buildings and called on their governments to resign as
unemployment soars in Eastern Europe

US hires advisers, Rothschild firm,
on auto restructuring - by Jui Chakravorty and David Bailey, Global
Research, February 8, 2009The US government has
retained two law firms with extensive bankruptcy experience and the
investment bank Rothschild to advise officials on the taxpayer-backed
restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler, a person with direct
knowledge of the work said

Stiglitz: Turkey should avoid an IMF deal
if conditions are not suitable - Global Research, February 8, 2009Stiglitz was interviewed
by the Anatolia news agency yesterday. Noting that existing stand-by
models do not sufficiently cover the needs of countries, he said the
IMF's classical stand-by models are not very helpful in rescuing
countries from the effects of the crisis. He stated that, contrary to
what many contend, IMF stand-by deals do not improve the credit rating
of a country. The lack of sufficient control and supervision, which
were among the primary causes of the global crisis, according to
Stiglitz, largely stemmed from the IMF's suggestions in its stand-by
agreements that countries loosen their control over their economies. He
added that a country's credit rating falls more when it ends a stand-by
deal than it rises when a deal is signed with the IMF. Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said a
few of the IMF's demands, which he avoided making public in
order "not to harm mutual respect," were unacceptable. (si chiama:
"omertà")

The American ruling class - by
Tom Eley, Global Research, February 8, 2009Obama’s servility before
the financial aristocracy was summed up by the reassurances he gave it
in announcing his limits on executive pay. “This is America,” Obama
said. “We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for
achieving success.”

NEW
CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
TO MEET IN PHILADELPHIA - By NWV News writer Jim Kouri,
NewsWithViews.com, February 8, 2009Early this year, selected
delegates representing the People of each of the fifty states will
convene in Philadelphia to debate our constitutional crisis and
establish practicable strategies the People can take, en masse, to
peacefully reclaim Liberty and restore Constitutional Order.According to the group,
the US faces a grave constitutional crisis including:• Endless armed Middle
East conflicts without congressional Declarations of war• Economic catastrophe resulting
from a privately-owned central bank and a debt-based fiat dollar

LIBERALS
PROPOSE FAST-TRACKING TREATIES - By Cliff Kincaid,
NewsWithViews.com, February 8, 2009The
liberal Brookings Institution has
come up with a controversial way to get costly and unpopular treaties
ratified by the U.S. Senate. Their answer is to bypass the
constitutional requirement that treaties obtain two-thirds of the vote
of the Senate before passage by redefining the treaties as statutes.
Then, they would only need a bare majority for passage in both Houses
of Congress, which just happen to be controlled by Democrats

Unemployment
Figures, Right Between the Eyes
- By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/06/09I added that “you
morons!” at the end so that Mr. Bloomberg would see it and say to
himself, “Hey! This guy is right; manufacturing employment has been
falling for years and years! This means that the people who currently
write for me are a bunch of idiots! I’ll offer this Mogambo fellow a
nice, cushy job at a huge salary to write for me and then people will
see what in the hell is going on!” For an example of the horrors to
come, The 5-Minute Forecast notes, “For the first time in their
history, the Girl Scouts of the USA this week announced they will be
making smaller cookies and putting less in each box…but still charging
the same price.”

Financial
Markets Analysis: Stocks Bounce, Where
Next? - The Market Oracle Newsletter, February 8th , 2009Outrageous bank bonuses:
greedy culpable bankers continue to reward themselves for failure with
billions of tax payers monies across the globe. In the UK the Labour
governments in-action is going to cost it the next election for
allowing this to happen, after-all the banking rules and contracts have
already been been broken in the aid of £800 billion of liabilities with
more to come, the only contracts still being held up are those that
allow bankers to be rewarded for destroying the British financial system

- Convegno Programmatico
dei Pensionati Cattolici, movimento politico non ideologico
finalizzato alla tutela sociale della Terza Età, sabato 7 febbraio 2009
dalle ore 10,00 alle 13,30 e dalle 15,00 alle 18,30 nel Vicariato di
Roma, Casa Bonus Pastor, via Aurelia n. 208 (pianificano di adottare i buoni locali di
solidarietà)US:
Increasing Number of States Declaring Sovereignty - Kurt Nimmo,
Infowars, February 5, 2009Although Fox News and CNN
are not telling you about it, a growing number of states (9) are declaring sovereignty.
Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri,
Oklahoma, California, and Georgia have all introduced bills and
resolutions declaring sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment. Colorado,
Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Alaska, Kansas,
Alabama, Nevada, Maine, and Illinois (12)
are considering such measures. As Obama and Congress further extend the
dictatorial reach of the federal government — under the control of a
small cotorie of globalists and international bankers — we can expect
more states to assert their rights under the Constitution and the Tenth
Amendment

Now Tony Blair finally has the private jet
he's always wanted (even if it is rented) - By Daniel Boffey, Daily
Mail, 07th February 2009Sir Evelyn, 77, who was
one of a number of billionaires to dine at Downing Street in Mr Blair’s
final days in power, has owned the plane since 2002 through a company
called Metropix. In 2000, Sir Evelyn donated GBP 250,000 to the Policy
Network, a think-tank presided over by Peter Mandelson which organises
many of the conferences – including in Washington, South Africa and
Budapest – at which Mr Blair gives speeches

QUEEN CANCELS DUBAI STATE VISIT
AFTER THEFT - Christopher Story, 7 February 2009IMMENSE SUM OF MONEY
DIVERTED FROM CITIBANK TO MIDDLE EAST. On Friday 6th February 2009, a
colossal sum of money was illegally diverted to the Middle East by
someone inside Citibank. The perpetrator was caught but we have been
unable to confirm that the funds were retrieved. On 6th February it was
suddenly announced unexpectedly that Her Majesty The Queen and the Duke
of Edinburgh had cancelled an unspecified long-planned State Visit,
'because of clashing engagements', especially the meeting of the Group
of 20 in London, scheduled for late March. The Times revealed on 6th
February that ‘many expatriates have been abandoning their cars outside
Dubai’s international airport and fleeing home rather than risking jail
for defaulting on loans. Police have found more than 3,000 cars, mainly
Mercedes and large 4x4s, at the airport in recent months’

Obama
CIA choice nets $700,000
from rescued banks - Christine Seib in New York, Times
Online, February 5, 2009President Barack Obama's
nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was paid more
than $700,000 last year by businesses including struggling US banks
bailed out by billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. The revelations
about Leon Panetta's finances highlight the difficulty the new
administration faces in finding experienced advisers that do not
violate the President's ban on hiring lobbyists

Putin to the West: Take Your Medicine
And don't go socialist - by Justin Raimondo, February 2, 2009The high-and-mighties of
the West had recently undergone a spasm of unrestrained hubris, from
which we have only just begun to recover. This manic mood was given
expression not only by the Bush Doctrine and its attendant military
campaigns, but also by a mad triumphalism that predated 9/11 and really
started with the fall of the Soviet empire. The "unipolar" delusion
distorted our thinking and gave rise to all sorts of grandiose projects
that wound up costing us dearly (A true alternative to soviet-style
communism is not anarcho-capitalism for the rich and debt-slavery for
the poor -- but rather social credit as developed by Arthur Kitson and
C. H. Douglas -- correcting the flaw of a market system with feudal
credit and land monopolies leading to all wealth being sequestered by a
small networked aristocracy of power motivated by supremacism and
advantaged by amorality towards other peoples whom they view as
unimportant beasts of economic burden)

Kosovo's
Independence and U.S. Policy - Congressional Research Service
Report RS21721, February 2, 2009Kosovo has high levels of
government corruption and a serious organized crime problem. Poverty is
a significant problem in Kosovo. About 45% of Kosovo's population is
poor, according to the World Bank, with an income level of 43 Euro per
month or less. About 15% of the population is very poor, and has
trouble meeting its basic nutritional needs. Poverty is particularly
severe in rural areas. Since the 1999 war, Kosovo has been heavily
dependent on international aid and expenditures by international staff
in Kosovo

US govt formally charges KBR in
Nigeria bribe case - Reuters, 07 Feb 2009The U.S. government on
Friday formally charged engineering company KBR Inc in a $180 million,
decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in
contracts. But former KBR parent Halliburton Co said last month it
would pay $559 million to end the investigation if the government
approved the settlement, which was the largest penalty against a U.S.
company for bribery charges under federal law

State
can run out of money, but can't file for bankruptcy - By Dan
Carden, Daily Herald, 06 Feb 2009Facing an ever-growing
pile of bills, crushing debt and less tax money flowing into the state
treasury, Illinois is broke. But could the state climb out of its
nearly $9 billion budget hole by declaring bankruptcy? No, say tax and
budget experts. Federal law permits individuals, businesses and local
governments to file for bankruptcy reorganization and sometimes debt
forgiveness. States are not covered by the law (states can resort to
monetary sovereignty issuing money and managing credit)

Breaking
the United Nations’ Code X
- by Robert Singer, LA Progressive, 3 February 2009Without Congressional
oversight, the U.S. will move towards Canada and Mexico where
supplements are considered drugs, not foods. Codex if implemented will
reverse DSHEA and the U.S. will no longer treat dietary supplements as
foods, but as toxins. Let me repeat that, Codex treats foods as toxins!

Michigan
Sheriff Halts Foreclosure
Sales - By KELLY CURRAN, Pyrabang, February 4, 2009Evans said “I cannot in
clear conscious allow any more families to lose their homes through
foreclosure sale until I’m satisfied they have been afforded every
option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure.”

French
President Nicolas Sarkozy accuses Gordon Brown of ruining British
economy - By Rosa Prince, Telegraph, 06 Feb 2009"The reason is simple:
because it's in people's heads. If the consumer no longer consumes, he
won't change just because we add or subtract one VAT point, it's
because he's scared for his future, he's scared for his job and says to
himself: 'I must save, because bad times are coming'. Gordon Brown
cannot do what I am doing with carmakers [giving them up to 6 billion
euros]... in construction and other industries, because they haven't
got any left."

UK:
38,000 companies expected
to go bust - By Yvette Essen and Helia Ebrahimi, Telegraph,
06 Feb 2009Fears mounted that 38,000
small businesses could fold this year after government data showed a
sharp rise in corporate insolvencies

Wall
Street CEOs, investment bankers
charged prostitutes on corporate cards, madam says - John
Byrne, TheRawStory, February 6, 2009Investment bankers racked
up $100,000s in prostitution charges. Davis told the network she
disguised the charges in various ways so they would appear to be
legitimate business expenses when accountants sifted through credit
card statements. One CEO, she said, ordered her to send him invoices
for "roof repair on a warehouse" to disguise the charge for prostitutes
from corporate funds

Three U.S. Banks Shut by Regulators
as Financial Crisis Deepens - By Margaret Chadbourn and Ari Levy,
Bloomberg, Feb. 7, 2009Three banks, two in
California and one in Georgia (County Bank, Alliance Bank, FirstBank
Financial Services), were seized by regulators, bringing this year’s tally of closings to nine as a recession and record foreclosures
extend the biggest financial crisis in more than 70 years

Acts Of Insanity Are What Destroyed
The Economy - The International Forecaster, February 4 2009Just more Keynsianism in
the works, health of banks getting worse despite injections, Why not just let them fail and
prosecute their officers for fraud? no end to the bailouts,
insane acts of economics, Davos a bust, the world will eventually move
away from the dollar

We need
our country back - Nigel Farage, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5
February 2009We'll only have British
jobs for British workers when we have a Britain run by Britons. The
Laval and Viking cases are simply confirmation of how the unions
themselves were sadly hoodwinked by Jacques Delors. He promised them a
"social Europe" and they thought that was what they wanted. What's come
back to bite them is that the Europe on offer is not what they thought.
The absolute free movement of labour is what is on offer and there's no
way of changing that without leaving the EU itself

ISRAEL
TO ELECT SUPER CROOKS - by Barry Chamish, APFN, Feb 6, 2009Avigdor Liebeman was
intimately tied to international money laundering at the defunct
Jericho Casino through his intimate ties to owner Martin Schlaff. Those
who do actually recall, well remember that Yasir Arafat's cut in the
gambling joint was handled by his financier, Muhammad Rachid, the same
crook who planted $300m of money stolen from the Palestinian Authority
by Arafat in a secret Swiss bank account

A Dark Nation
in Dark Times - by Sheriff Jim Schwiesow, Ret., NewsWithViews.com,
February 7, 2009The nation is already
deeply in hock and has used its taxpayer citizens as collateral for
huge international loans. We are living a hand to mouth existence and
have reached the limits of our borrowing abilities. We will be forced
to crank up the printing machines and runaway inflation will ensue. For
each little spurt of optimism there will follow a number of reverses.
The economy will collapse and the social upheaval that follows will set
into motion a series of prophetic events that will finish off the
nation...

ECB delays on interest rates despite
German industrial slump - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 05
Feb 2009Critics say the ECB is
falling far behind the US, Japanese, British and Swiss central banks,
which have all slashed rates to near zero. Both the Fed and Bank of
Japan have already moved to the next stage of stimulus by purchasing
bonds or stocks directly. "This is negligence. Rates should have been
slashed to 1pc," said Dierk Hirschel, chief economist for the German
union confederation

South Africa's Miners Face Deepening
Gloom - By Tom Burgis, Financial Times, February 5, 2009South Africa is a member
of the International Monetary Fund, whose bylaws forbid members from
linking their currencies to gold -- the metal on which South Africa was
and still could be built, the
metal whose price the IMF helps suppress

Two Federal
Suits Highlight Retail Banks'
Potential Liability in Ponzi Schemes - Sheri Qualters, The
National Law Journal, February 6, 2009A pair of federal
lawsuits against Sovereign Bank and its Spanish parent company, Banco
Santander S.A., highlight the legal battles surrounding retail banks'
liability in Ponzi schemes, including Bernard Madoff's alleged scam. A
new case in Florida against Banco Santander tries to pin liability on
the company and its investment management arm, Optimal Investment
Services S.A., while in Massachusetts, a lawyer and receiver for
defrauded investor-clients is seeking a retrial of a case against
Sovereign Bank

Small
Firms Targeted by Con With Fishy Fees - Petra Pasternak, The
Recorder, February 06, 2009Houston lawyer Richard
Howell Jr., whose firm was scammed out of $182,500 by a client who
contacted and hired him through e-mail, has spoken publicly about his
situation so he can prevent others from making the same mistakes.
Howell, who has practiced law for 23 years, recently told Texas Lawyer
, a Recorder affiliate, "I'm a capital 'D' Dumbass."

Legal
Sector Lost 1,300 Jobs in January - Nate Raymond, The American
Lawyer, February 6, 2009The job losses in the
legal sector were just a
fraction of the 598,000 jobs shed throughout the United States
last month as the national unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent. Since
the current recession began in December 2007, the legal sector alone
has shed 14,500 jobs

End the Fed - Ron Paul, Feb 5,
2009Before the US House of
Representatives, February 4, 2009, introducing the The Federal Reserve
Board Abolition Act, H.R. 833. Madame Speaker, I rise to introduce
legislation to restore financial stability to America’s economy by
abolishing the Federal Reserve. Since the creation of the Federal
Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a
boom-and-bust monetary policy...

Congressman Calls for Debt-Free Dollars
- BY CHRIS PETHERICK, HeartlandNews, 02.04.09Kucinich quoted the
Constitution as authorizing the government to be the sovereign power to
issue money. “Because of this monetary crisis,” he said, “we have an
opportunity here. Instead of giving private bankers more power, we need
to incorporate the Federal Reserve into the Treasury where all new
money could be created as government money, not as interest-bearing
debt.”

The World Social Forum: Dear
capitalists, admit you got it wrong - BELÉM, The Economist, Feb 5th
2009Buoyed up by a crisis and
with five presidents in attendance, the international left has ideas
for fixing the world that a neoliberal might recognise, the idea that
money and finance are public goods and should be shared out
accordingly, through democracy

Endless
Propaganda: The War on Terror is a
Hoax - Paul Craig Roberts, 321gold, Feb 5, 2009Americans and Israelis do
not call their bombings of civilians terror. What Americans and
Israelis call terror is the response of oppressed people who are
stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets loyal to the
oppressors. These people, dispossessed of their own countries, have no
State Departments, Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or
voices in the mainstream media. They can submit to foreign hegemony or
resist by the limited means available to them

Bank of New York Mellon's TARP deal
worth $20 million - By Chris Carey, February 5, 2009The Government
Accountability Office has spilled one of the Treasury Department's TARP
secrets, revealing the value of the Bank of New York Mellon's contract
to serve as master custodian for the financial-industry rescue program.
Bank of New York Mellon also sold $3 billion of its preferred stock to
the government in October, as part of the Treasury Department's plan to
inject capital into banks to shore up their balance sheets and
spur lending. Wheee! This banking business stuff is easy!

Inflation
Took My Medication - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning,
02/05/09I am trying to find a way
to make this all mean that we have a duty (a patriotic duty!) to rise
up as an angry, outraged mob, descend upon Washington, D.C. screaming
in outrage and drunken incoherence while brandishing official, and
laughably overpriced, Mogambo Mindless Mob (MMM) torches, pitchforks,
T-shirts and snazzy hats, ruthlessly intent on burning the damned
Federal Reserve to ashes and then – our blood-thirst for vengeance yet
un-slaked – turn our terrifying gaze upon Congress itself, which
allowed and encouraged the banker trash The Whole Freaking Way (TWFW)

The Five
Stages of Collapse - by Dmitry Orlov, Nov 11 2008Once the process of debt
going sour gets started, it is hard to stop, and if deleveraging were
to run its course, we would be down over 1300%. To monetize that much
debt would require over 1300% inflation. And once that gets started, it
becomes very hard to stop. And, that, believe it or not, is actually
the good news. Because most of our debt is denominated in our own
currency - the US dollar - the US will not have to declare sovereign
default, like Russia was forced to do in the 1990s. Instead, we can
inflate our way out of national bankruptcy, by printing a lot of
dollars. We will repay our
national debt, but we will do so in worthless paper money, bankrupting
our international creditors in the process

US: SITE LISTING EIGHT STATES ASSERTING
SOVEREIGNTY - 5 February 2009The link leads to a page
that lists eight States presently working to assert their sovereignty,
with links for each one that read to further reading - Washington,
Montana, Arizona, New Hampshire, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma and Hawaii

The World Economic forum (WEF): Requiem
for an overweight - by Eric Walberg, Global Research, February 4,
2009The world’s economic
elite gathered in a subdued atmosphere at this year’s World Economic
Forum to assess the now global economic crisis. New York University
professor Niso Abuaf compared it to a funeral, though not for the sake
of the dead “ancien regime”, but “for the
ones staying behind.”

European
single market is undermining labour - by Brian Denny, Spectrezine,
February 5, 2009The use of cheap foreign
workers as a battering ram against organised labour is not a new
concept. In 1934, as European countries followed the United States into
the Great Depression, French writer Antoine de St Exupéry described
Polish miners expelled from French coalfields once they had fulfilled
their usefulness as "half-human shadows, shunted from one end of Europe
to the other by economic forces."

IMF Accused in Latvia -
Spectrezine, February 5th, 2009LBAS president Peteris
Krigers complained, “The government’s and IMF’s attitude has neglected
Latvian society.”He continued, “Instead of
asking the unions and the employers to participate in creating an
economic stabilisation plan, and thereby reducing the risk of making
incorrect decisions, we are only told about these decisions once they
have been made.” Moreover a union report accuses the IMF’s plan of
“breaking collective agreements in hundreds of businesses […] which is
a violation of the recommendations of the International Labour
Organization”

Accounting Firms Take New Hits Over Madoff,
Other Ponzi Schemes - Pamela A. MacLean, The National Law Journal,
February 5, 2009A Minnesota accounting
firm has been hit by lawsuits alleging that it failed to detect
problems in two separate Ponzi schemes -- the purported $50 billion
investment scam by financier Bernard Madoff and the $3.5 billion
alleged "electronics" scheme by Thomas Petters. The suits against
McGladrey & Pullen and similar suits stemming from the Madoff
scandal against accounting firms KPMG, Ernst & Young and BDO
Seidman point up the likely spread of litigation as financial victims
attempt to recover massive losses

The
postman who wants to deliver the end of capitalism - By John
Lichfield in Paris, Independent, 4 February 2009M. Besancenot says that
the party is democratic but wants to overturn "pseudo-democratic"
institutions and give people control of their own lives. This means
getting rid of the market economy, starting with the nationalisation of
the banks into a single "state banking service"

Spain's
downward spiral spooks bond investors - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,
Telegraph, 03 Feb 2009"This is a national
emergency. The government is being overwhelmed by events," said Mariano
Rajoy, the opposition leader. The mood has changed dramatically in
recent weeks as debtors
launch hunger strikes and one builder threatened to set himself on fire
to protest the credit crunch. Maravillas Rojo, the labour secretary,
said four million people may be out of work by end of the year

Madoff
Tipster Markopolos Cites SEC’s
‘Ineptitude’ - By Jesse Westbrook, David Scheer and Mark
Pittman, Bloomberg, Feb. 4, 2009Markopolos told Congress
today that he contacted the SEC in 2000 after examining Madoff’s
investment strategy and determining in four hours that returns
exceeding 10 percent weren’t possible. Markopolos, in almost a decade
of communication, said only one SEC staff member understood Madoff’s
scheme and “the threat it posed to the public.”

FBI
uncovers nine million dollar ATM scam
- BigNews, 4th February, 2009Hackers orchestrated a highly coordinated, global attack
on ATM cards involving the theft of a staggering nine million
dollar from bank customers, and they could strike again

Man hands out cash in New York -
By Sima Kotecha, 4 February 2009The minimum anyone can
get is $50 (£35). The maximum is $5,000 (£3,513). No matter who you are
or what you do Bailout Bill guarantees that you'll get something if you
just show up and tell your story

Competing Ideologies: Davos v. Belem
- By Stephen Lendman, rense,com, 2-4-9For the ninth consecutive
year, WSF's participants agreed that "Another World Is Possible." This
year it's essential, now more than ever

TARP
Lawyers to Banks: Think Twice About Taking Government Cash - Zach
Lowe, The American Lawyer, February 4, 2009With President Barack
Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner reportedly promising to
attach more strings to federal bailout money, Am Law Daily decided to
speak to some of the lawyers advising the dozens of financial
institutions keen on applying for a chunk of the fresh $350 billion in
Troubled Asset Relief Program funds Congress released last month. Those
lawyers were nearly unanimous in saying that banks of all kinds are
becoming more cautious about participating in TARP

Obama Considers Tax on Cabinet:
Would Create Budget Surplus, Experts Believe - Borowitz Report,
February 3, 2009"According to
projections, if members of the Cabinet actually paid their taxes, we
could wind up with a budget surplus in excess of $18.2 billion," said
Obama economic adviser Paul Volcker. Mr. Volcker said he strongly
favored the plan, but added, "Fortunately for me, I'm not officially in
the Cabinet."

The
Looming Crisis at the Pentagon
- by Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson, LewRockwell.com, February 3,
2009More than 20 years ago,
Chuck Spinney wrote a
classic account of the now-routine bureaucratic scams practiced within
the Pentagon to ensure that Congress will appropriate funds for
dishonestly advertised and promoted weapons systems and then
prevent their cancellation when the fraud comes to light. In a paper he
entitled "Defense Power Games," of which his superiors deeply
disapproved, Spinney outlined two crucial Pentagon gambits meant to
lock in such weaponry: "front-loading" and "political engineering."

U.S. Debt Default, Dollar Collapse
Altogether Likely - by: James West, Seeking Alpha, February
03, 2009In discussions on this
topic with editors of top tier financial publications, such speculation
is dismissed out of hand, and the
argument to refute the likelihood of such outcomes is never brought
forward

THE
CREDIT CRUNCH LAB: Iceland's Warning
to the World - By Ralf Hoppe, SpiegelOnline, 02/02/2009First came the financial
crisis, then the uproar: Iceland is the first European country to
suffer the full effects of the global financial crisis. Is this a taste
of what's in store for the rest of the world?

Waste, fraud in Iraq being repeated in
Afghanistan - By RICHARD LARDNER, AP, 02 Feb 2009Waste and corruption that
marred Iraq's reconstruction will be repeated in Afghanistan unless the
U.S. transforms the unwieldy bureaucracy managing tens of billions of
dollars in infrastructure projects, government watchdogs warned Monday.
The U.S. has devoted more than $30 billion to 'rebuilding' Afghanistan.
Yet despite the hard lessons learned in Iraq, where the U.S. has spent
nearly $51 billion on reconstruction, the effort in Afghanistan is
headed down the same path, the watchdogs told a new panel investigating
wartime contracts

Planetary Bankruptcy - by Sharon
Kayser, The Brussels Journal, 2009-02-03Our world managers
succumb to monetary dementia. As the situation worsens by the day
Bernanke skipped Congressional Financial Hearings in favor of a
secretive euro bankers confab. According to Ron Paul, the meetings took
place in Basel and were chaired by ECB's Jean-Claude Trichet - not so
surprisingly the mainstream outlets remained elusive about them

Let banks fail, says Nobel economist
Joseph Stiglitz - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Davos, Telegraph,
02 Feb 2009The Government should
allow every distressed bank to go bankrupt and set up a fresh banking
system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by
propping up a corrupt edifice, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the
Nobel Prize-winning economist. Should the taxpayers have to lower their
standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a
small elite?

Enough Bad Banks; We Need Good Ones
in a New System - by John Hoefle, Executive Intelligence Review,
February 6, 2009We can not simply close
all the insolvent banks, clean them up, and feed them back into a
banking system which does not work. We must fix the banking system,
itself, first. That means putting not only the banks, but the Federal
Reserve System, through bankruptcy. We must put the Federal Reserve
down (the same as to be done with the ECB in Europe)

Latin America Breaks Free - By
Benjamin Dangl, The Progressive, February 2009The failure of
neoliberalism in South America, and the subsequent rise of the new
Latin American left, was clear at President George W. Bush’s arrival at
a regional summit for the Organization of American States in Mar de
Plata, Argentina, in 2005, where soccer legend Diego Maradona told
reporters, “I’m proud as an Argentine to repudiate the presence of this
human trash, George Bush.”

Australia:
Govt to hand out billions - sbs.com.au, 3 February 2009The federal government
has unveiled a massive $42 billion economic stimulus plan, including handouts of $950 for those earning
less than $100,000 per year

Anger, finger-pointing at bankers as Davos
ends - BusinessMirror, 02 February 2009The search for scapegoats
and the worst economic prospects since World War II resulted in a
gathering marked by fear, anger and bitterness, a far cry from the
usual search for consensus. Almost
everyone blamed the few bankers who showed up for the near-collapse of
the financial system

Iceland's new government formed
- Telegraph, 01 Feb 2009"I was today asked by the
president of Iceland to finish forming the government, which has
succeeded. That government will be based on new social values," said
Social Democrat Johanna Sigurdardottir, a gay who serve as premier

AP:
Bailed out banks sought
foreign workers for high-paying jobs - 01 Feb 2009An Associated Press
review of visa applications shows banks collecting billions of dollars
in federal bailout money asked for permission to bring thousands of
foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs. The dozen banks have
received the biggest rescue packages, worth more than $150 billion.
They tried to bring in almost 21,800 foreign workers over the past six
years to fill openings that paid an average salary of nearly $91,000

Swiss
police clash with anti-Davos protesters, arrest 60 - AFP, 01 Feb
2009Swiss police clashed with
demonstrators against the Davos forum on Saturday, firing tear gas in
central Geneva after officers were pelted with bottles and fireworks.
Sixty people were arrested after hundreds of protestors converged on
the centre of Geneva to protest against the World Economic Forum in
Davos in defiance of a ban imposed by local authorities, a police
spokesman said

HANDS
OUT FOR THE BAILOUT - By Derry Brownfield, NewsWithViews.com,
February 1, 2009Roger Fredinburg summed
up my sentiments when he wrote: “The only bailout in the news
should be stories of our politicians and their felonious friends being
bailed out of jail and smuggled out of the country. As a matter
of fact, I think we might consider banishing them and sending them to
live on a cold frozen continent more fitting with their cruel, frigid
and selfish hearts. I suggest an outdoor nudist colony in Greenland.”

". . . as [the usurer] fed on insolvency and controlled legislation,
the laws were as ingeniously contrived for creating debt, as for making
it profitable when contracted. . . As the capitalists owned the courts
and administered justice, they had the means at hand of ruining any
plebeian whose property was tempting."
- Brooks Adams -

Our
vision is to become the premier
government contractor for economic counterintelligence
to support our
country’s fight against economic terrorism

“Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but quite often,
gradually, and almost imperceptibly, by the depreciation of their
currency” - Nicolas Copernicus, in 1525

In a nation ruled
by psychopath bankers, those who are not genetic psychopaths, are
induced to behave like psychopaths to survive. When the rules
are set up to make a society "adaptive" to psychopathy, it makes
sociopaths of everyone. As a consequence, a very large number of people
are effective sociopaths. (Here we use "sociopath" as a designation of
those individuals who are not genetic psychopaths)